Byron Dorgan: “100 years from now, none of us will be here. I guess that is the bad news. We will all be dead a century from now. But…”

“100 years from now, none of us will be here. I guess that is the bad news. We will all be dead a century from now. But those who are interested in who we were, what we were, what our value systems were about, could take a look at what we are doing here and determine a little something about what we thought was important. Someone once asked the question, if you were charged with writing an obituary for someone else and knew nothing about them but had to write it from their check register--the only information you had about someone was their check register--how would you write their obituary? I suppose you would find out what they spent their money on, what they thought was important, what was their value system. So, too, could you evaluate the value system of this country and this Congress by this budget we are voting on today. I am going to vote against this budget. I will tell you why. Because I think in the rearview mirror, this budget represents a value system that misses much of what is important about what our obligation is today.”