Political Quotes

“let me make it clear that we will, of course, have a budget and it will be delivered to the House. This is not out of the ordinary, that the Congress has not brought this budget up. In the last 20 years, 19 of the times the budget resolution has come beyond a certain date required in the law. The issue is not a hard fixed date, really. The issue at hand is whether we are able to either reach agreement with the administration and be able to bring a proposal forward; and absent an agreement with the administration, we will bring one forward that we will draft ourselves and that we will have an opportunity to consider in this House. The issue today is really rather one of no matter what budgets come to this floor, they ought to be counted as being in balance. The Blue Dogs have brought a budget. It is in balance. They are going to appear before the Committee on the Budget. I have praised the Blue Dogs for their budget. The Black Caucus, in the past, has brought balanced budgets, as has the Republican majority, and we will bring one. We are going to bring one on some date certain. I have already said that the administration could bring a budget and slip a date. Who cares about the specific date on a calendar? It is the work product we are most concerned about and the quality of the product. So today what we are trying to say, both to the administration and to the Congress, and to anybody else that wants to draft a budget, use honest numbers. No gimmicks.”