Political Quotes

“today has been an eventful day on the unemployment compensation front. We began the day working with Republican colleagues to put together what we thought was an amendment they would join us in pushing forward. But surprisingly and disappointingly to me, those whom we worked with were unable to join on the amendment. I am disappointed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we gave the Republicans what they wanted. It is entirely paid for. The amendment made structural reforms in the unemployment compensation bill, which is something they said they wanted. The amendment includes a proposal, much like that advocated by Senator Portman, that would prevent people from collecting both unemployment insurance and disability insurance at the same time. Our amendment includes an offset that is Paul Ryan's offset. It was the same thing we used in the Murray-Ryan budget agreement this body supported a few weeks ago. So it is totally paid for with something Paul Ryan suggested and we adopted a short period of time ago. It makes structural reforms they said they wanted--maybe not all of them, but it made structural reforms. It is hard to understand why they cannot take yes for an answer. Maybe it is because they do not want the legislation passed. It is possible. But I have not given up. I have discussions with a number of Republican colleagues this evening. They said they are going to try to come up with something else. I certainly hope that is the case.…”