Political Quotes

“today I will be reintroducing a measure, which I have in every one of the last five sessions introduced at the very early part of the session. It has a simple premise, yet it is in the best interests of the search for better government, and I hope that we can as a body, together with the other body, see fit to imbed it into our body politic and into our legal system right at the start. It is simply this, Mr. Speaker. We now have a situation where the fiscal year of the Federal Government ends on September 30, and legally under Congress' own laws we are compelled to pass a new budget by the next day, October 1. We have never, or perhaps only one time, accomplished that during the time that I have been a Member of Congress, since 1983. Not only have we failed to do that, but on 53 occasions during my incumbency these last 14 years, on 53 occasions we have had to resort to temporary funding until a full budget could be put in place. Those temporary funding measures, called continuing resolutions, have become a way of life for the Congress of the United States, flaunting the very same law that the Congress itself put in to govern itself on budgetary matters and to bring a timetable end to the budgetary process every year, 53 times. Moreover, since I came to Congress not only do we have these 53 occasions where we had to do temporary funding, but we had 8 Government shutdowns.”