Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to be here with my colleagues from Montana and Alaska to talk about some of the impacts in our various States. I thought I would share six or seven different aspects of the impact of a government shutdown and the potential of a default and then turn this over to my colleague from Montana. Then I think we are going to engage in a little bit of back-and-forth. Before I list specific examples of the challenges that are faced, I thought I would give a framework or an analogy of how to think about this. The legislative process is very much like a baseball game where various folks come together. There are some for bills, some are against a bill, they have a competition, and ultimately one side wins. Normally, the side that loses, if they believe they are still right, will say we will be back again later in the session, next year, just like a baseball team, to compete again or we will be back next year with an improved team. But in this case, after the team that supported health care won, the team that lost said we are going to appeal the ruling to the umpire and we are going to ask the umpire to rule the game out of order and rule that the losing team actually won. Then, if the umpire doesn't come to our rescue, we are going to hold the crowd hostage and we are going to threaten to burn down the stadium.…”