Political Quotes

“I rise to continue the series of comments my colleagues have been making about the situation we find ourselves in at this moment, with our government shut down and with the possibility of a default on the payments of our Federal Government. This situation is virtually unprecedented, to be in a situation of near default. I want to step back from the immediate arguments over what the answer looks like to understand that we have wandered far outside the normal, orderly lines of legislative debate. Legislative debate is like a baseball game. Folks come together, and some want plan A, some want to oppose plan A, and one team wins and one team loses. In this case, we can go back to the health care debate. Some folks wanted a health care plan that would put millions of folks without insurance into insurance and have a number of systematic reforms that would help Americans and to end abuses in the insurance industry. They wanted to create competition between companies so that customers; that is, citizens, could compare policies and thereby get a better deal, and encourage companies to drop their prices. This debate now goes back quite a while, to 2009, 2010. The side that wanted the improved health care won. The other side normally says, Well, we will be back next year. We will be back with some changes in team members, as in baseball, and we will debate this again.…”