Political Quotes

“I find it so curious that the majority refuses to discuss their budget tonight and instead want to discuss a budget that is not even on the floor. I have been on the Committee on the Budget for 6 years and I have never seen such a fiasco in all my life. Usually the budget is when a party lays forward their plan, their vision of government. What have you done tonight? Brought this to the floor after midnight, not that the press who is not here, the American people who are long asleep are missing much, because you have not had the integrity, the courage, to tell the American people what your plan is. You do not specify the cuts. You get up here and make lofty language, and you do not specify the cuts. What is more, this plan changes all the time. Take Social Security, what I think is the most vital function of government. In the Committee on the Budget we debated, one of the highlights of the chairman's bill, a plan to take all the surplus out of Social Security, embark on a new venture, no more Social Security, a new venture of private accounts. We debated. Every one of you voted for it. Your colleagues would not stand for it apparently. You go to the Committee on Rules, the bill comes out, and there is no aspect of that dimension of this budget. Where did it go? We have all this debate, you are going to end Social Security as we know it and it comes out of the Committee on Rules and we are just supposed to be left with an 'oops, never mind'?”