Political Quotes

“I am very glad that you have taken the chair to preside because I want to talk about something I think is kind of near and dear to your heart. This is something that I passed in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate back in 2019, and this was passed with bipartisan support. I am talking about a bill called the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act. Following passage, I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal. I just want to read the first two paragraphs of that column, published on September 22, 2019: If the Legislature in my home state of Wisconsin fails to pass the next year's appropriation bills, we don't shut government agencies down. We fund them at the previous year's appropriation levels. Doesn't that make sense? That common-sense approach should apply in Washington, but it doesn't. By the time I arrived in 2011, Congress's appropriations process was completely broken. It still is. The United States has since had-- Again, this is as of September 2019. --the United States has since had three government shutdowns, passed 34 continuing resolutions to avoid shutdowns, raised or suspended the debt ceiling nine times and-- Again, this was just 4 years ago. --increased the federal debt $8.5 trillion. So here we are, a couple days before the end of the fiscal year, 4 years later--our debt, by the way, has more than doubled; it stands at $33 trillion now--and we are facing a shutdown. Isn't this ridiculous?…”