Political Quotes

“Mr. President, for the third time--third time--since late September, Congress is rushing to avert a government shutdown. We have an annual appropriations process for the fiscal year, which ends at the end of September each year. But, for some reason, we find ourselves in a position where, frankly, we reflect embarrassingly the dysfunction here in Washington, DC, because of the way we deal with keeping the lights on and keeping the government up and running. The Senate and the House both have failed to send a single regular appropriations bill to the President's desk. Just before the start of this fiscal year, we passed a stopgap bill to fund the government through mid-November. When that deadline rolled around, we punted again and set two separate deadlines. The first is this Friday, and the second is just 2 weeks after that. Today, Congress is on track to kick the can down the road once again. The Senate is preparing to vote on a continuing resolution that will push these deadlines even further. The first will arrive on March 1, and the second will come on March 8. We can only wonder what is going to happen between now and March 1 and March 8 that will prevent us from another can kicked down the road. None of this is inevitable. This is a result of planned dysfunction. It is embarrassing to find ourselves in this situation once again. This is not complicated. It is not physics. We are talking about the most basic duty of funding the government for a full year.…”