Political Quotes

“my friend and colleague Senator Conrad said earlier this morning, protesting a bit, that he never said we would have a markup in the Budget Committee--mark up a budget, as required by law. But that was what I understood. I am not here to argue the details of it. But he said publicly, as I understood it, that he was going to have a markup. Our people were working on as many as 80 amendments. I was working on amendments, key health care amendments, at the time. I heard the Senator was having a press conference, we turned it on, and he basically said we are not going to have a markup. He said there was a markup, we started a markup, we had opening statements, and I offered a bill but we just did not have votes, no amendments, no final vote on passage; didn't ask a single member on the Democratic team on the Budget Committee to vote for or against anything. That is how it happened. I am not accusing him of deliberately misleading me. What I would say is I thought we were going to have a markup--and a markup means the chairman lays down the chairman's mark, it is marked up with amendments, others can offer substitutes, and you vote, and citizens of the United States of America can hold us accountable for what we do and if they do not like what we do, they vote us out of office. They have been pretty good at that in recent years. A couple of times they whacked the Republicans, last time they whacked the big-spending Democrats in 2010.…”