Political Quotes

“I am really pleased to be able to join my colleague Senator Isakson from Georgia as we have introduced our bipartisan legislation, the Biennial Budgeting and Appropriations Act. I think this is a welcomed piece of bipartisan legislation at this point in the year. I want to start by thanking the Senator from Georgia for his very good work on this legislation. He has been leading this effort since he first came to the Senate in 2005, and I have been fortunate enough to partner with him on the legislation in the past two Congresses. I think that by working together, we could pass this commonsense, bipartisan legislation that could change the way we do business in Washington for the better. As Senator Isakson said, there is no question that our budget process is broken. Since 1980, we have only finished two budgets on time. In that timeframe, Congress has resorted to nearly 170 short-term funding bills or continuing resolutions. We also experienced a costly and dangerous government shutdown in October of 2013 that cost our economy $24 billion. It hurt small businesses. It hurt the people across this country. That is no way to govern. I understand, as Senator Isakson said, that biennial budgeting will not fix everything, but it is a reform that will encourage us to work across the aisle to become better stewards of taxpayer dollars. I can attest to this personally because, as Governor of New Hampshire, I saw how you make a biennial budget work.…”