Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if I might just say to my colleague from Minnesota, I appreciate her good work and advocacy on this subject. This is something we have been working on for some time, along with some of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, for a lot of reasons; one of which, of course, is because, as the Senator from Minnesota mentioned, these are difficult fiscal times. Obviously, every area in our budget needs to be reviewed and scrutinized and looked at to see where we might be able to achieve some savings. But, as my colleague noted, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The way that has been proposed in the amendment that was offered, and on which the cloture vote will occur tomorrow, is the wrong way. We cannot tell an industry in December we are going to give them a set of policies that are going to be in effect for the year, that they are going to be able to make investment decisions, they are going to be able to go to their lenders, they are going to be able to go secure financing based upon this set of policies--we do that around here all the time. We make policy, and we try to do it in a way, hopefully, that gives those who are investing their dollars some certainty about what those policies are going to be. Well, how can we then, in the middle of the year, come back and say we are just going to pull the rug right out from under them? We are sorry, that is just the way it is. This is gone.…”