David Price: “This debate is a bizarre experience for those of us who have been urging negotiation on the budget for a year. ``Take…”

“This debate is a bizarre experience for those of us who have been urging negotiation on the budget for a year. ``Take the President up on his overture of last December,'' we've said to our Republican friends. ``Let's go to a conference with the Senate and work out a budget.'' But the Republicans have steadfastly refused. They have run out the clock. And why did they do that? So that in a crisis atmosphere, they could demand a ransom for doing our basic duty--keeping the government open and paying our bills. Well, that's extortion, and it's way over the line. We can't do that. In fact, we need to open the government. We could do it tonight. The votes are here if the Speaker would simply permit a vote. We could reopen the government immediately. I promise you once we do our basic duty, we will be happy immediately to do what we should have been doing all along, and that is to negotiate a budget plan, a budget plan that puts everything on the table: revenues, entitlement, all categories of spending, a budget plan that secures this country's economic future and ends this charade that the Republicans have put us through here as the new fiscal year begins.”