Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I think at any time--hopefully soon--it appears that we are going to be bringing up the vote to proceed as we did yesterday. Let me just repeat what I did just a couple of hours ago on the floor. I am not critical at all of the Democrats who voted against the motion to proceed yesterday based on the fact that we dropped the ball over here. We were supposed to give them the necessary information on some of the funding mechanisms and things on the offsets. We didn't give them enough time before the vote took place. You can't go over several hundred pages in a few minutes. Now it has been 24 hours. Well, even my counterpart on the Democratic side, Senator Boxer, voted against it for the same reason. And they have a right. So, anyway, I feel optimistic that when we have this vote we can proceed to the bill. Let's keep in mind that this is a bill I perceive as a must-pass bill. The alternative to this would be very, very expensive. It would go back to what we had to suffer through between 2009 and this moment that we are in right now; that is, a list of 33 short-term extensions. Short-term extensions, as we all know, are waste and irresponsible use of highway dollars. Consequently, we need to be spending that money on roads and bridges, not short-term extensions. So I will look forward to getting that motion to proceed adopted. As soon as that happens, that is when we are going to pull the trigger to get as many people down on the floor with amendments.…”