Political Quotes

“first, I want to tell the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee that I actually very much appreciate her work. I actually trust her to do the right thing. But we got this bill last night at 9 o'clock. It is a 500-page bill. It has multiple levels of authorizations in it that we found so far--authorization on an appropriations bill. It has what I would consider--and we haven't been completely through it--some things that are totally counterintuitive to where we find ourselves today in terms of spending money. Before I could grant a unanimous consent--and I will; as soon as we get through with the bill I plan on granting unanimous consent. But I want to know, we just heard the majority leader say he can't understand why somebody wants to read this bill. We are talking about in excess of $1 trillion. That is one of the problems, one of the reasons we are $17 trillion in debt. It is because people don't read the bills. I also want to say to my friend from Alabama, I have the greatest praise for him. He knows some of the heartburn we have on this, but we knew that was coming from the House. But to not allow us the time to assess what you have produced by being able to read and study the bill is going against the best traditions of the Senate. It is also going against common sense. How do we know whether we want to offer amendments unless we have been able to read the bill?…”