Political Quotes

“I hope the court reporter will take down the smile I have on my face because the answer to the question is kind of easy. We have had to file cloture 87 times in this Congress because, on everything we have tried to do, we have been obstructed. So that is the reason. Everyone knows we have had some very big issues. When President Obama was elected, we found ourselves in a deep, deep hole. It was so deep, so deep. During the prior administration, we lost 8 million jobs. The month that President Obama and President Bush shared the Presidency, in January--that month--we lost 800,000 jobs. So we had a lot to do. Now, I know people criticize our doing health care for various reasons. There is criticism we did the bank reform bill, Wall Street reform. We did housing reform. We had a very, very busy Congress to try to dig ourselves out of the hole. So I say to my friend, who, like me, has been on the Appropriations Committee--I am not on it now but he is--the Appropriations Committee is a wonderful committee. Everyone here knows why we did not have the individual appropriations bills. I say to my friend, I hope next year we can get them done. But I think there is more of a chance next year because we have gotten a lot done to help get ourselves out of the hole we found ourselves in because of the previous 8 years which created the big hole we had to kind of dig out of.”