Political Quotes

“My colleague is absolutely right. There was tremendous interest this year. If we look at the last election, the 2010 election, a lot of the people who were elected in the House and Senate were elected because they ran on a message to their constituents of getting America's fiscal house in order, getting spending and debt under control. Where does that start? It starts with a budget. So they got here and tried to get on the Senate Budget Committee. We have all these bright new Members of the Senate who have a lot to contribute and who have had no opportunity to do that because we haven't had a budget, a markup, and we haven't done the necessary things in order to move the budget process forward. I am completely in agreement with the Senator from Alabama when it comes to what the priorities should be. It ought to be doing a budget that actually focuses on cutting spending and getting this debt under control. I tried to offer an amendment to this nonbinding sense-of-the-Senate bill, but the majority is blocking amendments. That amendment would cut all nonsecurity discretionary spending for the current fiscal year by 2.5 percent. It is a nominal amount, I recognize that. It is not a big spending cut. It is a small haircut. It will not solve our problem. It would produce about $11 billion in savings from some of these accounts that have seen, as the Senator noted, extraordinary growth since 2008.…”