Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we find ourselves back in the same place. It is like deja vu all over again. We have been through this process year after year. I have been here 12 years, and it seems more often than not, we are in a very similar circumstance. We are just a few days away from Christmas, and we are being asked to move the deadline for the expiration of government funding, potentially leading to a shutdown even closer to Christmas. Today, we are being asked to move it to the day before Christmas Eve. Obviously, we need to keep the government funded. We don't want a shutdown. No one wants a shutdown. A shutdown would be particularly bad at this time of year. It would be horrible for our constituents, people who rely on the government for a paycheck or for this or that program. It would all be bad, and we all feel the weight of that. We also feel the weight, as we approach Christmas, of wanting to be able to make good on our promises to our families to spend the holidays with them rather than here in Washington. As a result of that, every year, knowing this, there seem to be people who want to make sure that all spending decisions are wrapped into one spending bill. Very often, those are wrapped together in one omnibus spending package and then held off until a day or two-- sometimes just hours--before the government is set to shut down. That is when the magic happens. But it is not good magic; it is really bad magic.…”