Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have profound respect and admiration for both the Senator from Alabama and the Senator from Vermont. As you can tell from their remarks, they are congenial, collegial, and delightful people. They also have many decades of legislative experience between the two of them, and the country has been blessed by their gifts, their talents, and their willingness to work hard. I want to respond to a couple of points made a moment ago, one suggesting, perhaps, that the answer to all of this is simply a desire to work together, as if that were somehow not what we have in mind. We were also told a moment ago that they are almost finished with the appropriations process, that it is almost complete. Now, if that is the case, then I would ask the question, why haven't we been permitted to see it? Why haven't the other Members of the U.S. Senate been able to see that? It is a little bit hard for some of us to hear that if we all work together, we can get this done, when that is literally all we are asking. I don't think any one of us supporting Senator Johnson's legislation is here saying that it is perfect or here saying that it would magically solve every problem in the world or even every problem in the U.S. Senate having to do with the spending process. We are not saying that. But what we are saying is that without it, we will stay stuck in the same closed-loop system.…”