Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me start by responding to the ranking member of the Budget Committee by saying that I could not agree with him more that it is absolutely unacceptable that we have not had a budget passed in the Senate for more than 1,000 days. That is totally unacceptable. It is one of the reasons we are in such a financial crisis in this country. So I completely agree with Senator Sessions that we should be doing a budget resolution on the Senate floor, and I wholeheartedly agree with his comments that it is absolutely irresponsible for us to be proceeding without a budget resolution. And as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I would say to my colleagues that it makes it very difficult for us to carry out our work. Due to the cooperation of the chairman and ranking member of that committee, we are operating under allocations for each subcommittee, but it would be far preferable if there were a budget resolution that passed, and it should have passed last year, the year before, and it should be passed this year. So we are in complete agreement on that point, and I know that has been a great source of frustration for the Senator from Alabama as the ranking member of the Budget Committee. Having said that, let me explain a few facts. First of all, there are no tax dollars being authorized by this reform bill. There is no transfer of taxpayer money to the Postal Service. What we have here is a very strange and unusual budget situation.…”