Political Quotes

“in the last 40 years, we have had 21 government shutdowns--21. Twenty-one times, Congress and the President have not been able to agree or the Senate and the House have not been able to agree. As a result of that, Federal workers around the country have faced the consequences of Members of Congress not finding agreement. Help me understand this. Twenty-one times in 40 years, Federal workers who get up every single day and serve the American people and serve their neighbors have faced the consequences of furloughs because Members of Congress could not come to a resolution. It is not that it has gone unnoticed. For a decade or more, there have been solutions that have been proposed. Ten years ago, I had a proposal in the House--actually, Rob Portman had a great proposal in the Senate at the same time to deal with government shutdowns. Let's say when we get to the end of the fiscal year, we will just have a continuing resolution, but then we will cut spending every few months to press Congress to get to their work. The problem was, hardly anyone on the other side agreed with that. We couldn't get any bipartisan support for it. So my colleagues on the other side of the aisle proposed that if we get to the end of the fiscal year, we would have a continuing resolution, and every couple of months, the spending would go up, and it would just continue to go up and up and up until it was resolved.…”