Political Quotes

“Thank you. As I have listened to the colloquy we have had here on the floor today in this Chamber where such important issues of war and peace, spending, raising revenue are debated on a daily basis now and thinking about the beginnings of the country, and you have asked about the questions coming up about appropriations, and we have had passed numerous appropriations bills. I think we have passed 12 here in the House of Representatives. The Senate has not yet acted on all of them, because, of course, once we pass the appropriations bills, and they must originate under the Constitution here in the House of Representatives, they go to the Senate. The Senate has to pass them. They come back and forth and they go up to the President. Of course the President has now threatened a veto on the spending necessary to run the Federal Government, to run the program for health and human services, to educate our kids, to heal the sick, all the programs that we have in the Federal Government, he has threatened to veto. And then if he vetoes a bill as we saw with the SCHIP bill, it will come back here where Congress will have the power to vote to override that veto and put it into law despite what the President says. All those powers and all the debates arise out of what my colleague from Florida noted was a living, breathing document.…”