Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his leadership. Madam Speaker, I rise today because we have just heard, an hour before we came on the House floor, more debate about opening the government than we actually have had people negotiate to actually open the government. You know, there are all kinds of reasons why everyone is saying that the government is shut down, but the biggest reason is because no one is willing to negotiate on the other side of the aisle. I can tell you, the President, 16 blocks from here, was sitting here over Christmas and over New Year's, and, indeed, he was sitting here last weekend when 30 of my colleagues from across the aisle went to Puerto Rico on a junket with lobbyists to talk about how important the government shutdown must be to them. Well, I can tell you that the biggest fallacy in all of this is that all the perils that my colleagues opposite seem to demonstrate, and the urgency that is there, I haven't seen the urgency. We come in; we get sworn in; and what happens? They go home. The second weekend, what happens? They go to Puerto Rico. Even today, while the President invites Democrat colleagues to go 16 blocks from here and negotiate on how we may solve this, what do they do? They turn down the President.…”