Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator. Madam President, first let me thank the chairman of the Budget Committee, who I have to say is going to be sorely missed. In fact, I am not sure we are going to let him go. I think we are going to lock the doors to his office and not let him leave. He has been such an incredible valued Member of the Senate and a leader for our country on these issues. It is absolutely true that what we are really debating is whether we go back to policies that put us in the huge deficit ditch in which we find ourselves or whether we continue to go forward as a country. We need to keep going forward and going forward even more quickly certainly. But in my State, we are seeing us begin to move forward, with manufacturing coming back and innovation opportunities, and we need to continue to push for that. But let me stress as well what the chairman has said. We passed the Budget Control Act by 74 votes in the Senate--74 votes, a bipartisan vote--on August 2, 2011. It put in place the spending caps the chairman talked about. It laid out something that, frankly, in my time since being here starting in 2001, has been done differently and, frankly, has a stronger basis for it because instead of just having something passed by the House and the Senate, it was actually signed by the President. It is law. It has the force of law, and it is in a situation where it has even more impact than it would normally. So, yes, we did not do the normal process.…”