Political Quotes

“Madam President, I came to the floor to talk about a young woman in Cincinnati, OH, but I guess I am just amazed at the amnesia in this body. I hear colleagues on the other side of the aisle say Democrats vote for spending to keep that gravy train going; that Democrats believe that job creation is always the government; that Republicans believe we have to get spending under control and how politically unpopular it is to vote to cut spending. I hear these things over and over, and I hate cliches but, you know the Yogi Berra line: ``It's deja vu all over again.'' I was in the House of Representatives for the first 6 years of this decade, and I saw what happened. What happened was my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--when one bird flies off the telephone wire, they all fly off the telephone wire--voting on issue after issue to bankrupt this country and to drive our economy into the ditch. In 2001, tax cuts for the rich, George Bush's tax cuts which went overwhelmingly to the richest taxpayers and, as the Presiding Officer from North Carolina knows, using reconciliation to drive these tax cuts through in 2001, 2003, 2005, bringing Vice President Cheney in so they not only used reconciliation, they had to bring the Vice President in, who is almost never here, as the Presiding Officer knows, to vote in passing that with 51 votes. We had a surplus in those days. We had a surplus, and they took that surplus and they enacted tax cuts for the wealthy.…”