Political Quotes

“Had the President signed this bill, the aid which the gentleman who just appeared in the well wanted to see flow back to his region would have started. We would have had 3 days of moneys out of this bill flowing already into the distressed areas. So who is playing with whose lives? Could not the President have signed that and understood that to prevent the Government shutdown is another good measure that would have been swept into the mix of providing this relief for the distress of the Middle West? I have been trying, and everybody knows it, for 10 years now to produce an automatic methodology by which we could prevent Government shutdowns. It has nothing to do with politics. It has nothing to do with trying to get the President to succumb to some political pressure, because I did it when President Bush was President. I did it when President Reagan was President. I did it with a Democrat controlled Congress and a Republican President, and now the reverse, a Republican Congress and a Democrat President. It merely says that, if we fail as a Congress, which we have done 50- some times in the last 10 years, to come to an agreement on a budget within the budget deadline, that automatically, the next day, last year's appropriations would go into being until the full budget can be completed.”