Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to talk about an opportunity-- actually something good that this body could do for the American people and for our economy and for the taxpayers. Tomorrow, the Senate budget conference that was established as part of this recent agreement that was made over reopening the government and extending the debt limit will meet. This will be the first public meeting of the group. We have had some other meetings, including the one I just had with some of the Members of that group, but this is the first opportunity for us to meet as House Members and Senate Members, Republicans and Democrats, in this budget conference, and it could not come soon enough. The opportunity we have with this group is that in the wake of what happened at the beginning of this month--which was, again, a government shutdown and then a debt limit debate and then pushing right up against the debt limit--the opportunity we have now is to finally deal with this issue of government shutdowns and to deal with the underlying problem of overspending that forces us to extend the debt limit time and time again. So let's start with government shutdowns. The agreement opened the government for 3 months. That is right. In January, we once again come to this cliff where the government shuts down unless we act. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everybody. In January we hit this again. It does not have to be that way.…”