Political Quotes

“every Senator wants to keep America safe, and that is why every Senator should be concerned about a particular threat to our national security. This threat to our national security is called sequestration. Sequestration puts in place drastic cuts to all funding, defense and nondefense. The Defense authorization bill that is before us today doesn't fix that--and that is a gross understatement. We should not start spending until we develop a bipartisan budget that does. That is the only responsible way to protect both our national security and America's middle class. Sequestration results from what happened 4 years ago with another threat of a government shutdown because the Republicans couldn't get their financial house in order. The Budget Control Act of 2011 passed. That act included a number of significant spending cuts and established a supercommittee led by Senator Murray and Congressman Hensarling from Texas to produce a balanced, bipartisan agreement for additional deficit reduction. Unfortunately, Republicans could never agree. There was a lot of this: Yes, we are almost there, we are almost there. But they could never pull the trigger and agree. There was a refusal to close a single tax loophole to reduce the deficit; not a single one could they agree on. So the supercommittee failed to reach an agreement, and the Budget Control Act triggered deep, automatic cuts. Sequestration was never intended to happen.…”