Political Quotes

“briefly, I will call my colleagues' attention to this serious bipartisan effort with Senator McCaskill of Missouri to contain our penchant in this body to violate or manipulate the budget and spend more money than we intend to spend. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, and Members of both parties have been guilty of that. I originally offered a very similar amendment that adopted the budget amounts passed by this Congress, our Democratic leadership, and would have made those amounts that we said would be our top spending amounts--the budget maximum. It would have set a statutory cap at those levels and say if we were going to violate those limit, it would take a two-thirds vote to do so. A number of senators were concerned about it, but it received broad bipartisan support. When we voted, 56 people voted for it--4 short of the 60 necessary to be adopted. But I thought it was a positive step, and I know Senator McCaskill felt it was, too. I believe we can dispute how much we ought to spend, but one of the biggest dangers and problems the Senate confronts--and often fails to meet--is breaking our own budget. This amendment would have made it harder to break the budget, and 56 Senators voted for it.”