On the recordJuly 24, 2012
I do think we are having that discussion, and particularly about the budget. There have never been 60 popularly elected Republican Senators, so anytime the Republicans have controlled the Senate, it was with a number that was below 60. And the budget became incredibly important because you can do things that involve spending money or collecting money during the 10-year budget window, and that decade can be extended every single year if you wanted to. So you can always be talking 10 years in the future of solid policy. And, by the way, in a democracy, 10 years of knowing what the policy is is a lot of time. We have to have a budget. Our friends in the majority--now there are 53 of them--could do anything in the budget or at least set out to do anything in the budget that 53 of them said they wanted to do. They could change tax policy for 10 years if 53 of them wanted to do it. They could change how we implement the President's health care bill, if 53 of them wanted to do it, because that is spending money, and we would have to do that. I don't think there is any doubt that if our side were in the majority, we would have a budget because, frankly, it is the biggest tool our size majority has ever had. There have never been 60 of us. We couldn't rely on 60.
