Political Quotes

“here we are, the 21st of December, 4 days till Christmas, and Congress is finally getting around to doing its duty on COVID-19 relief, as well as the Omnibus appropriations bill, which will keep the government open and keep the lights on through the end of the fiscal year next September. I have to editorialize here that I think this is a terrible process. It is a terrible process. I just saw one of the Texas delegation House Members saying: I am expected to review thousands of pages of an appropriations bill and COVID-19 relief bill in the next couple of hours and then vote on it this evening? Well, we will be in the same posture. As terrible as this process is, it was intentionally created. I am sure that the Appropriations chairman, Richard Shelby, and Leader McConnell would have loved to have had a regular appropriations process to vote out each of the subcommittee appropriations and pass them using regular order, giving the Members of the Congress a chance to offer amendments and maybe improve the bill, but we weren't provided that opportunity because, essentially, the Democratic leader and the Speaker of the House of Representatives understand that this kind of broken process empowers them to the detriment of individual Members of the Congress and to the detriment of the people we represent. It empowers them, not the rank- and-file Members. So, I believe this is a--and the same thing is true on COVID-19, of course. We passed the CARES Act in March.…”