Roy Blunt: “I thank the Senator. Of course, they have every right to be mad. They have every right to be as frustrated as we are…”

“I thank the Senator. Of course, they have every right to be mad. They have every right to be as frustrated as we are that the work in which the Senator from Alabama is so involved as the leading Republican on the Budget Committee hasn't been able to produce a result. We are unlikely to have a budget again this year. I was just asked by a reporter walking over here--and, yes, I was in the House for some time before I came to the Senate--for somebody like you who has been in Washington, wasn't the tea party a big challenge? I said: No, the tea party was not a big challenge. They were a great opportunity for us to have someone out there talking about getting this spending under control. And I listed the struggle we were involved in before Senator Barrasso got to the Senate, where we actually took on entitlement spending in 2005. As I recall that effort, I got lots of calls on entitlement spending reforms, where we cut entitlement spending the only time in a decade by $40 billion. I got lots of calls, and not one of them was supportive of cutting spending. As far as I know, every phone I had rang everywhere I had a phone for 100 days, as far as I know, all the time. No matter how early we came in or how late we were leaving, those phones were all ringing. Every call was: Don't cut my program. As Senator Isakson said, as he was talking to the friends we are seeing today from hospitals around the country, the ones from Georgia, we have to look at everything.…”