Political Quotes

“what I have sent up is the Democrat budget that was passed out of the Senate Budget Committee. We heard the chairman lecture the Senate that we need to have budget discipline and we need a budget. Yet for the first time in the history of the Senate, since the Budget Enforcement Act was put in place in 1974, we have no budget. We have not even been offered a budget. The chairman of the Budget Committee, whose responsibility it is to bring a budget to the floor, has not brought a budget to the floor. This is the same chairman of the Budget Committee who, back in 1998, after we passed a budget but it had not gotten a conference report, said: The budget resolution was due by April 15-- He said this in October. The President plays no role in the budget resolution. That is the responsibility of this Senate and of the House of Representatives. These bodies have failed in their responsibilities. He made that comment after we passed a budget here, but we were not able to agree between the House and Senate. In this case, the Senate has not even brought up the issue. We are in a situation where we are now, after a few years of surplus, heading into a deficit and we have no budget discipline in place. We have not even had a debate on the floor of the Senate as to the future of the budget of the United States of America. Every single family in America has to budget. It is our responsibility--in fact, it is an obligation under the law that we pass a budget.”