Political Quotes

“While my preceding speaker, my colleagues and friend, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant], acknowledged that it may be unusual to have all the appropriations bills done by this point in time, I would make the point that we have never, ever seen such a debacle with the handling of appropriations bills that we saw in the first year of this 104th Congress. This House of Representatives has never, ever shut the Federal Government of this country down because it could not, would not get work done. That is the sorry legacy of the 104th Congress, and I do not think it is too much to expect that they would therefore try to get it done by the time the law says it has to be done, not have to come to the floor, ever chomping at the bit to climb on some airplane and fly home and waive the law, waive the completion requirement for getting the appropriations business done. In light of the record of this Congress, we have got to wonder, I think the American taxpayers have to wonder, just what is coming, what can they expect. Another shutdown when at the end of the fiscal year the work has yet to be completed?”