Political Quotes

“I could not agree with the Senator more. I would note, the reason we are here today is because a budget was not produced. The Parliamentarian of the Senate ruled that a budget has not been produced and, therefore, under the rules of the Budget Act, budgets that have been filed can be brought to the floor. That is how we were able to force the votes today. Senator Thune, briefly--and I will also ask Senator Blunt, who is in our leadership--isn't it a fact that what happened with the Budget Control Act is that we had spent so much money, we had reached the spending limit of America--the debt ceiling--and we had to have a last- minute effort to reach an agreement; the Republicans insisted that we had to reduce spending, and we got a reduction in spending from $47 trillion over the next 10 years to $45 trillion? You would have thought that was going to bankrupt America--that we would spend $45 trillion instead of $47 trillion. That is not a budget. It was a limit on spending, and it was done because Republicans said: We are not going to raise the debt limit until you at least cut some spending. That is all that could be accomplished. We avoided a crisis, but it was a pretty tense time. Senator Blunt.”