Political Quotes

“in the last month, Republican leaders have repeated this mantra over and over: We support a payroll tax cut for working families. But we have not seen any proof of this yet. It has only been talk. Senate Republicans have twice voted down their own payroll tax proposal, and House Republicans were unable to bring their plan to a vote for weeks. We understand they are going to have a run at that tonight. I have served in the House of Representatives. When I served in the House of Representatives, no one would ever consider pushing something through with a majority of the majority. When I served there, Bob Michel was the Republican leader, Tip O'Neill was the Speaker, Jim Wright was the majority leader and the Speaker, and they always worked together on a bipartisan basis to get legislation passed. It is only a new thing that now the Republicans are saying: We are not going to pass anything unless we can do it on our own. That is unfortunate. I spoke to the Speaker yesterday. I have the highest regard for him. I consider him a friend. But I said to him, as seriously as I could, we are not going to finish the work for our country this year unless we work together. You cannot pass anything in the House unless you get Democratic votes because anything you pass with strictly Republican votes fails over here; and over here we cannot pass anything unless we get Republican votes. It is a fact of life. We have issues we have to complete this year.…”