Political Quotes

“I was hoping my colleague would stay on the floor to have a little bit of discussion about the topic he just raised because there seemed to be some missing elements in his discussion. And isn't that kind of what happens here, where we hear from our leadership about all of these terrible things the other side is doing, and we just kind of swallow that hook, line, and sinker, rather than actually looking at the record. Now, one of the pieces left out of his story was 1974, 100 Senators on this floor said: We are going to create a special fast track, filibuster-free, for one single purpose: reducing the deficit. And think of Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And Robert Byrd was an adamant-- adamant--advocate for the filibuster. Unfortunately, he had been very supportive of using the filibuster to block civil rights bills. But, in general, he was dedicated to making sure that it stayed in place. And even he joined 99 other Senators to say: Hey, we should have a special fast track solely for reducing the deficit. That was 1974. At that same time, that same bill created the Congressional Budget Office so we would use honest numbers in putting forward spending bills because if we are going to actually reduce the deficit, we have to quit using smoke and mirrors to pretend that what we are spending is less than it really is.”