Political Quotes

“I join my colleague from Pennsylvania in expressing relief and optimism that, finally, it looks as though we are rid of the wasteful and useless government shutdown we have been put through for the past 2 weeks; that it looks as though we are rid of the dangerous threat of American default that we have faced for the last few days; and let's hope that together we are also rid of the malicious spirit that led us down this evil path in the first place. A colleague the other day on the Senate floor used the analogy of a fire in an airplane's cockpit distracting the pilots from flying the aircraft where it needed to go as they had to put out the fire. That is kind of what we have been through these past 2 weeks. I hope we will have no more of our own countrymen lighting fires in the cockpit just to try to get their way. We need as a nation to get our heads up, fly the plane, and ready ourselves for the weather ahead. The last 2 weeks have been wasted in this useless artificial crisis and has distracted us from real crises, real problems, undeniable problems--things which the Speaker of the House can't make go away by finally allowing a vote but which will require us to work together to solve them. None is more significant to our children than what our carbon pollution is doing to the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. It is not enough just to put out the fire in the cockpit. We have to wake up to the real problems ahead and around us.…”