Political Quotes

“This is a fitting conclusion to a week that has shown the collapse of the Republican legislative agenda. Remember, this is the time we were supposed to be voting on budgets, but the Republicans cannot even bring themselves to allow a vote on the budget that they themselves have mandated. We're not voting on the Transportation-HUD; we're not voting on Interior. They refuse to allow a conference committee to be appointed so that we can reconcile differences on the budget, setting up a showdown over a shutdown of the government next month. Now we're dealing with health care for arguably the 40th time that they are going to ``repeal'' it. The bill is not going anywhere. They repeatedly demonstrated at our hearing yesterday in Ways and Means that my Republican colleagues don't even understand how the bill that they are so adamantly opposed to works. We have not seen any attempt to improve, to refine. What we have seen is an unprecedented effort to sabotage legislation, to make it not work for the American people, to confuse, to undercut. This is something that is unprecedented, to the best of my knowledge, in what we have had in Congress in the past. What more fitting illustration of a group that's bankrupt of ideas and bent on simply attempting to force their way for an agenda that is so extreme that they cannot agree to bring it to the floor to vote on it. I urge rejection of this charade.”