Roy Blunt: “you may have presided before, but you haven't presided when I have spoken on the floor, so it is great to welcome you…”

“you may have presided before, but you haven't presided when I have spoken on the floor, so it is great to welcome you, as both my colleague and the Presiding Officer, and I am glad to be working with you and glad we are both here today. We are both here today at a time when the American people really expect the government to work; the American people really expect people in Congress to be able to find middle ground. For too long we have been stuck--frankly, on both sides of the aisle--with too many people who ran for office saying: If I don't get what I want--I just don't want anything to happen unless it is exactly what I want. The best I can tell, that doesn't work anywhere. If you are getting what you want wherever you are working, wherever you are living, wherever you are going to church, there is probably something wrong with you. Democracy is about compromise. I think one of the great fallacies of the second option we will have today is that it is designed to keep the government open for 2 weeks at last year's spending levels, and then, at the end of 2 weeks--I don't know what happens then. There will be no information that Members of the Senate and the House will know 2 weeks from now that they don't know now. There is nothing that could be debated or discussed in the next 2 weeks that couldn't be discussed in the next 45 minutes.…”