Political Quotes

“Madam President, I would like to speak for a few minutes today about the importance of getting a budget done today, all the way through the process. Senator Reid, our majority leader, last evening spoke again about the fact that we have had 15 days now of trying to just come together to create a conference committee to work out differences between the House and the Senate on a budget. For some reason, after talk for the last 3 years that I can remember from colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying that we need regular order, we need regular order, we need to get a budget done, they now are objecting to getting a budget done, which is extraordinary. The fact is that we cannot get a budget done if the House and the Senate do not appoint conferees and sit down and negotiate differences. There are huge differences, I might add, between the House and the Senate. It is true that we will not accept, in the Senate, eliminating Medicare as an insurance plan for seniors and the disabled in this country, which the House does in their plan, turning it into a government voucher, putting seniors back into the private sector to try to find insurance. We certainly will not accept that, it is true. There are other areas of that budget we absolutely will not accept, but we know the first step in coming together to find something we can accept is to sit down and talk. I mean, I am very proud of what we were able to do in March. We had 110 amendments. We all remember.…”