Political Quotes

“First, I want to begin by agreeing with my friend on the other side on a number of areas. I, too, have concerns about the process by which we operate, and would have preferred a number of these items to come, as my friend suggests, separately. But the reality is, of course, we are late in the year and late in the session, we have got significant work to do, and this, I think, is the best way to proceed. It is worth noting that the conference report itself is a compromise. The Democrats and Republicans were involved in putting that together, and, indeed, this entire bill has considerable Democratic support, as we work toward a larger compromise on the omnibus itself. It is also worth noting why we ended up in this situation. Frankly, the Appropriations Committee in this House accomplished its work--all of its work--for the first time in a long time early this year. All 12 legislative bills passed through the Appropriations Committee, six of them across this floor. To suggest that anything has been done in the dark or in the back room, frankly, ignores that fact. What happened was the United States Senate chose not to allow any appropriations bills to come to the floor. They didn't do that as a body. My friends on the other side of the aisle in the Senate--the Democrats--chose not to allow any bills to come to the floor. To be fair to them, they also completed every appropriations bill through the full committee.…”