Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in support of a clean, short-term continuing resolution--or, as we say, a CR--to temporarily fund the government without controversial policy riders. After the vote we just had, I hope we can move to such a measure. Even some Republican leaders have acknowledged that this previous vote was a show vote designed to appease, but to fail. It is part of a troubling pattern that has been emerging over many months of avoiding meaningful, bipartisan talks to fix the budget and waiting until the last moment to deal with issues everyone knows must be addressed. We have an obligation to the American people to keep their government working. It is one of the most basic responsibilities we have as Members of Congress. A clean CR at this juncture fulfills this obligation, keeping the government open for a few more weeks while we work on a plan to eliminate the sequester-level budget caps for defense and nondefense programs. I wish we could have begun work on an overall agreement earlier in the year, as Vice Chairwoman Mikulski and others strongly urged months ago, but at this late hour we should pass this short-term measure and move on to serious negotiations on budget caps for this year and beyond. Shutting the government down now will not serve any useful purpose. What a shutdown will do is waste taxpayers' money and hurt the economy. Indeed, the 2-week Republican government shutdown in 2013 cost our economy billions of dollars.…”