Political Quotes

“You raise a good point because the way the process is supposed to work, one side of our Capitol--the House--will pass the bill or maybe the Senate will pass a bill, and then there might be a slightly different bill passed out of the other Chamber, and then the two sides would come together in a conference, and there would be some negotiating. There is some compromise going on. Prior to coming to Congress, I had a job of negotiating contracts. Your client would tell you when you go into that negotiating room: whatever you do, make sure you get A and B into that contract. So you know what your marching orders are, but you understand the other side has come in, and they have been told by their client: make sure you get C and D in that contract, whatever you do. The art is that the two of you get together and you negotiate. You go back and forth. Are you going to get 100 percent? You never do. That is negotiating. That is life, but here, we passed these bills. We are waiting to negotiate. They are not even acting. I go back to the appropriations process, which is fundamentally broken. Since 1977, you have only four times that the House and the Senate got this job done by September 30. That is a scandal. Everybody in this country knows that April 15 is an important date. You have got to pay your taxes that day. You can't call the IRS and say: Hey, can I get a continuing resolution on that? Can I have 3 weeks?…”