Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the issue the Senate is going to be considering for the next couple of days and ultimately voting on, it sounds like, possibly sometime on Saturday; that is, the cut, cap, and balance proposal that has been put forward by the House of Representatives. The House passed this particular proposal the night before last. It is now pending under consideration in the Senate. What I would suggest to my colleagues in the Senate is this: It is the only proposal out there. It is the only plan we have to vote on. It has now been about 813 days--I think is the correct number of days--since a budget was passed in the Senate. The Democratic majority has not submitted one for consideration here. We have not had votes on a budget. We have been operating without a budget. There is no plan. The House of Representatives passed a budget earlier this year. It was criticized by many people here--Democrats--as being something they didn't want to support. There wasn't an alternative put forward by the Senate Democrats or by the President. The President did put a budget forward in his annual budget release earlier this year, but the Senate voted it down 97 to 0. There wasn't a single Member, Republican or Democrat, who voted in favor of the President's budget proposal. Why? Because it would have raised spending, raised the debt--almost doubled the debt over the next 10 years, and it would have increased taxes by over $1 trillion.…”