Political Quotes

“it used to be, before the last Congress, the Senate had two speeds: one for deliberation and one for getting things done. Senators saved the deliberation speed for truly great issues of the day, and when we needed to get the country's business done, we came together to work things out. It used to be that all appropriations legislation was business the Senate came together to work on and to finish. Sometimes it was 1 day, sometimes it took 4 or 5 days, but we got it done. These days--for the last 3 years--the Senate has one speed: slow-- real slow. And we haven't had appropriations bills for a number of years because we haven't been able to do them because of the speed-- slow. Even when we are talking about preventing a government shutdown, even when there is broad agreement across party lines that we want to prevent a government shutdown, even then we are stuck in slow. Madam President, when we got the bill from the House, I didn't like it especially, but, as I said earlier--and I still feel this way--the Speaker at least got it to us at a decent hour, not at the last minute. These two good Senators, Shelby and Mikulski, worked very hard for days to get this done. Now, frankly, I didn't like some of the things Senator Mikulski agreed to, but I was with her, and we agreed to do the things together because we wanted to get a bill done. We swallowed a lot of pride.…”