Roy Blunt: “I think the Senator is exactly right. He has made that pledge at press conferences. I think some of that has been said…”

“I think the Senator is exactly right. He has made that pledge at press conferences. I think some of that has been said recently on the floor of the Senate: Let's get our work done. And if we were in the majority, we would pledge that we would get our work done. That means Republican Senators and Democratic Senators would wind up having to take some votes they would just as soon not take, but that has always been part of being in the Senate, that you are here to say what you are for, and you are here for 6 years to say what you are for. The last 6 years--if you have served in the Senate and your only time in the Senate, as would be the case for some of our colleagues up to now, has been the last 6 years, you have really never had a chance to say what you are for. Half the years you didn't even have an appropriations bill on the floor. And we have added to the legislative dialog normal phrases that didn't used to be quite as normal, such as ``continuing resolution.'' And what is a continuing resolution? That means you basically can't get your work done for the next year, so you decide to just put a couple of bandaids on whatever were the rules for last year and move forward. When you talk about a continuing resolution, that is failure. We are going to have a few more days here in July and early August, and then, as Congress has always done, we will go home and hear a lot of complaints in August this year because we are not getting our work done.…”