Political Quotes

“I thank Chairman Enzi. I am delighted to join Senator Enzi on the floor today to talk about our bill. An enormous amount of work has gone into preparing for it, including, I want to say, more than a dozen hearings that Chairman Enzi led in the Budget Committee to build the factual predicate for the work we were doing. I will, as the Chairman has mentioned, also drop a word of appreciation to Chairman Womack and Chairman Lowey, who ran the Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform, which gave us a chance to work through some more of these issues. The fundamental problem we are trying to address is that, in the Senate, no committee actually looks at the deficit, the debt, and the borrowing in any kind of a comprehensive way. In theory, the Budget Committee is supposed to, but in practice, the Budget Committee has become two things: one, a vehicle for the majority to drive a political budget limited to appropriated spending through, with no bipartisan compromise. We have seen over and over how that has ended up. It has never been of any use. Even if you get it done, you break through the budget by getting to 60 votes, and we do most things around here by getting to 60 votes. It is a fence that is basically a line painted on the ground. It is a fence with no fence to it. Moreover, we do reconciliation. That is usually a way to bust around the budget. Both parties have used it. The Republicans have used it for the so-called tax reform.…”