Political Quotes

“I want to disagree with my good friend, the minority whip, on a point. I don't think the Senate left yesterday because of anything the House did. It failed to act, and it left. It went home because it couldn't pass a bill. That is something we are not going to allow to happen here. We are going to pass legislation. We are going to get our part of the job done. The Senate, then, will be free to come back and pass something, and we can go into a conference and do exactly what my friend suggests, work out a compromise. So hopefully that is where we will end up in this process. With that, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio). Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, there are two real crises before us, and the Republican response was the misbegotten legislation, withdrawn yesterday, as it should have been, but the other wasn't even on the table in any form. There were 236 new fires started in the Western United States last night. There are 31 large fires that are uncontained. And the Forest Service and the BLM are running out of money. In the Senate bill-- which, granted, it didn't pass--but in the President's proposal was emergency firefighting money. But somehow, the Republicans here don't think those fires are an emergency and they don't care about the loss of resources, the potential loss of life, and the loss of property that is going to result.…”