Political Quotes

“first, I wish to speak on the appropriations bill. We still have several issues to address. Our Republican friends, mostly in the House--I want to say that my friend the Republican leader is working hard to get a good bill done, and I appreciate that, but Republicans are holding us up on some critical poison pill riders. We have made good enough progress. The four corners of the negotiations--the Appropriations chairmen and the ranking members in both Chambers and the House and Senate leadership were negotiating until 1:30 a.m. last night. I want to thank all of the staff who worked so hard and stayed up so late to bring us closer to an agreement. They have done heroic work, and I am happy to report that, if we get an agreement, we will see increases in NIH funding, year-round Pell grants, and housing assistance in the underlying omnibus bill. We are willing to have a voice vote on a short-term extension of the government funding in the hopes that we can wrap this up early next week. As I said last night, there is still a handful of unresolved poison pill riders, fewer than there were yesterday at 6 o'clock because of the work they did overnight, but there are still some out there. I want to reiterate the Democratic position. We don't want them-- zero. We are happy to pass a clean, bipartisan appropriations bill, which is the way this process is supposed to work. On the more controversial issues, we can have a debate in regular order.…”