Political Quotes

“Mr. President we have come to the end of a long process that has had some signal moments to it. Clearly, one signal moment was a few days ago when the tea party activists came to the Capitol--came to this building--gathered outside, and were led by Republican House Members in chanting about the U.S. Government: ``Shut it down! Shut it down! Shut it down!'' Shortly after that, there was a discussion between the Republican Speaker and the Members of the Republican caucus in which the Speaker indicated that they were to prepare for a government shutdown, and the response was a standing ovation, as reported by the Washington Post. As the distinguished Senator from Maryland knows, we sit through our caucus meetings, and there has never been anything like an ovation on our side for the concept of a government shutdown. There is silence, maybe an occasional groan of disappointment, when we have heard about how the goal posts have been moved yet again to keep an agreement from being reached. Recent polling shows there is a reason for this difference between the parties here, or the different attitudes and desires with respect to a government shutdown. Democratic voters prefer compromise to a shutdown by better than 3 to 1. By better than 3 to 1, Democratic voters would prefer us to work this out than to shut down the U.S. Government. On the other side, Republican voters actually favor shutting down the government.…”