Political Quotes

“I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I don't think anybody in this Chamber wanted to see the government shut down. Nobody wanted to see it down. As has been pointed out, we passed a continuing resolution, funded the government, sent it to the United States Senate, and they said ``no.'' So we sent another resolution that kept the government open. The Senate said ``no.'' A third time we sent a resolution to the United States Senate to keep the government open. The Senate said ``no.'' Then we said, Why don't we just sit down and talk? Why don't we have a conference committee--one of those committees that we have all the time in this body when the House and the Senate disagree. We call it a conference committee. We appoint a group from the House. They appoint a group from the Senate. We work out the differences. That's the way you resolve conflict. That's the way you move ahead. So the House appointed eight conferees. We went to a meeting, ready to meet with the Senate. They didn't show up. So we decided they don't really want to have any negotiations about how we continue to fund the Federal Government. Then we said, If they won't pass a continuing resolution to fund the entire Federal Government, maybe we should just take certain parts of the Federal Government and see if the United States Senate or our friends on the other side would vote in favor of doing that.…”