Max Baucus: “Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together. What is needed is the…”

“Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together. What is needed is the will. I have just returned from a week at home in Montana traveling from Fort Benton to Billings to Bozeman. I visited with constituents from all across our State. At each one of my meetings, the conversation would touch on the first snow of the season or football and the Bobcats or the Grizzlies. Those are, in this case, football teams. But inevitably every conversation turned to the challenges we face in Washington and the standoff we just had over the country's borrowing limit and funding the government. People have lost faith in our ability to serve them. They are worried about what the dysfunction means for the future of our country. For more than 2 weeks, Congress was stuck in a stalemate, unable to agree on a course for our Nation. The political standoff shook America's confidence and threatened the global economy. Thankfully, compromise was able to overcome conflict. Cooler heads finally prevailed. But our Nation didn't emerge from the fight unscathed. The 16-day government shutdown took a $24 billion bite out of the U.S. economy, according to Standard & Poor's. The rating agency now projects the U.S. economy will only grow at 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter as opposed to the already slow 3 percent predicted prior to the shutdown. That is a staggering self-inflicted wound, and defaulting would have been even worse.…”