Political Quotes

“for the third time in as many weeks, Republicans are poised to kill a tax cut without ever debating it on the Senate floor. Two weeks ago, Republicans filibustered legislation to cut taxes for small businesses. Last week, they filibustered a bill to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas and cut taxes for companies that move jobs back to America. Now they are filibustering our plan to cut taxes for 114 million middle-class families. Not one of these bills has gotten a debate on the Senate floor. So let's look at what led to this latest Republican filibuster. Two weeks ago, Senator McConnell came to the Senate floor to ask for two votes, one on the Democratic plan to cut taxes for 98 percent of American families and reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion. The other vote he wanted was on the Republican plan to raise taxes by $1,000 each for 25 million middle-class families while handing out tax breaks to millionaires of $160,000 each. That afternoon, I told the minority leader that Democrats were willing to give Republicans what they said they wanted--those two votes. But although it had been only a few short hours since Senator McConnell asked for those two votes, my offer was refused. He said he had to see our proposal first. It seemed like a thin excuse at the time. He hadn't seen our proposal when he asked for the votes in the first place, but others within his caucus had seen it, and the staff had seen it, of course.…”