Political Quotes

“I thank my friend for the question. It is nice to see him standing on the Democratic side. I hope he tries it again. If he likes it, he might do it more often. I would say this: We all know what Speaker Boehner did. The hard right in the House said we want to force the President to undo his Executive order. They know if they put it on the floor alone, the President might veto it, so they attached it to Homeland Security and they basically say to the President, the only way we will fund the Department of Homeland Security is if we include these unpalatable riders, which the President has said he would veto. So there is a simple solution. That would force a shutdown. What the House did is say if we don't do it our way, we are shutting down the government. That didn't work 2 years ago--and that effort was led by the junior Senator from Texas, not my friend, the senior Senator from Texas--and it is not going to work today. Everyone knows what our colleagues in the House did. They are playing hostage. They are holding a gun to the head of America and saying unless we do it their way, they are going to shut down the government. That is why they attached it. Let me repeat to my dear friend from Texas: No one objects to debating what the President did on Executive orders. We welcome that debate. It is the act of tying it to funding the government--the same thing they did with ObamaCare a few years ago--that says we are going to shut down the government unless we get our way.…”