Political Quotes

“Senate Democrats had hoped to work with our Republican colleagues this year on a fully bipartisan process. It got off to a great start when the four congressional leaders reached a budget deal over the summer, but it quickly went awry. Senate Republicans departed from the bipartisan process by unilaterally proposing their own allocations to the various agencies. This was not part of the agreement. This was not in the spirit or concept of the agreement. It was always, when we agreed, that we would work out the 302(b) allocations. Instead, the Republicans went ahead, unilaterally, and they proposed moving $12 billion--$12 billion--from critical health programs and military families to pay for the President's border wall, and that was way out of bounds. The Republican leader has accused Democrats, myself included, of breaking our budget deal by not going along with these very partisan bills. He knows--and every Member of this Chamber, Democrat and Republican, knows well--that Democrats are not going to support a unilateral move by the Republicans to take $12 billion away from military families, education, opioids, and NIH and put it into the President's vanity, partisan wall. So, until Republicans get serious about negotiating a bipartisan way forward, the partisan appropriation bills are all we have and they cannot move forward.…”