Political Quotes

“Madam President, this week, the Senate has one extremely important item on our agenda: to keep the lights on; in other words, to pass a government funding bill. We are just 3 days from the end of the fiscal year, and the Democrat-controlled Senate has yet to pass a single appropriations bill--no funding for our military, no funding for veterans services, no funding for border security, nothing. Now, this deadline does not sneak up out of nowhere; it arrives on the same day every year. Yet here we are, 3 days before the funding expires, and not a single appropriations bill has been voted on. The majority leader conceded a long time ago that the regular appropriations bills would be punted to a later date and we would pass a short-term funding bill to bridge the gap. As a general rule, I am not a fan of short-term funding bills. They don't provide the stability or predictability we need to plan for the future. That is especially true for America's military, which is operating in a dynamic threat environment with countless unknowns. In order to plan for and prepare for the future, government Agencies need a predictable budget, and stopgap bills simply don't cut it. As though this last-minute funding gambit isn't dramatic enough, the majority leader has raised the stakes even higher. He is not putting a clean funding bill on the floor; he is weighing it down with partisan freight. This is part of a political horse trade that happened a couple of months ago.…”