Political Quotes

“I appreciate the Senator from Minnesota being willing to stay in the chair for a few more minutes before I have to preside so I can take this time to express my concern about what has happened with the failure to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. The authorization for that administration has expired, and it has led to a partial shutdown of that agency and to 4,000 workers being placed on unpaid furlough. A number of those workers are from New Hampshire. While I know all of us here are glad we were able to come together to reach a bipartisan agreement on raising the debt ceiling and avoiding a financial crisis, I am deeply disappointed that bipartisanship has failed us when it comes to reauthorizing the FAA. I understand the House may head home for recess today and for the rest of August, stranding 4,000 FAA workers and as many as 70,000--that is right, 70,000--airport construction workers around the country who are out of work until we can get an agreement. So let me review for a minute how we got here. Since the FAA's authorization expired in 2007, Congress has passed 20 short-term extensions of the FAA. All of those bills, every single one of them, were clean bills intended to keep the FAA running while Congress decided how to deal with the complicated policy issues of a long-term reauthorization.…”