Political Quotes

“I thank the Senators from Arizona, South Carolina, and Georgia for the comments they have made. I already addressed the issue of the speech. I agree with the comments made by my colleagues here. I want to address the substance of this. We get caught up in terminology around here and sometimes talk beyond each other. I don't know what most people are doing today, but the country almost came to a halt in August of 2011 as we negotiated some reductions in spending-- $2.1 trillion worth. Most people believed that was not enough. I know everybody in this body has been contacted by the Fix the Deck folks and others who think we need to have a $4.5 trillion to $5 trillion deal, and I agree with that 100 percent. I thought that was what we were going to be doing. As the Senator from South Carolina said, had we done that, we could focus on the tremendous potential this country has. We are not going to do that. Let me go back to August 2011 when we agreed to reduce spending by $2.1 trillion. We implemented some things and we put some things off to what we call the sequester, which is what I am talking about now. The sequester was supposed to kick in on January 1 if we didn't reach an agreement on other spending reductions. I had hoped we would come up with other spending reductions. I know my friend, the Presiding Officer, felt the same way. But we have not done that.…”