Political Quotes

“Republican leaders in the House of Representatives wasted this week pursuing a rightwing proposal they knew from the start could not pass the Senate. From the very beginning, Speaker Boehner's Band-Aid approach was fatally flawed. It would have put us back in this incredible position we are in today--debating whether the debt limit should be increased, something that was increased I don't know really how many times but about 19 or 20 times during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. I had a little whisper to my left that said 18 times, so 19 or 20 was not too bad. The Band-Aid approach the Speaker came up with was totally flawed. It would have put us back in this incredible position of fighting to increase the debt limit--something we did 18 times during Ronald Reagan's administration. We would be fighting the clock to prevent financial collapse. We would start that again in just a few weeks. The Speaker's legislation was a concession to tea party extremists. Yet it barely passed the House yesterday with only Republican votes. It failed on a bipartisan basis last night in the Senate. There was an excellent article in the New York Times yesterday. The headline was ``The Centrist Cop-Out.'' The facts of the crisis over the debt aren't complicated.…”