Political Quotes

“In the 1994 year, the Democratic Congress, the last year the Democrats controlled Congress, the Democrats were able to complete all the budget bills, all the appropriations bills on time. The last time it has happened. Then we had 12 years of Republican rule in this Congress, in this House, and we had 12 consecutive years where the appropriations bills were not completed on time. So it should be no surprise to any of my colleagues and other outside observers that the Republicans are not anxious to see the Democrats come back into power and right away pass all 12 appropriations bills in a timely fashion. So I was not surprised, and I suspect others were not surprised, to see the extraordinary delaying tactics that we saw take place in this House last week, with continual and repeated procedural motions, motions to rise. And those of us that sat here at 2 o'clock in the morning on that night, we realized that this was not about substance. This was not about policy. This was merely about denying the Democrats a legislative victory because the last thing those on the other side would want is for us to come in and right away pass the appropriations bills on time, which hasn't happened since 12 years ago when we last controlled Congress.”