Political Quotes

“I will be raising a budget point of order against this legislation. But I do want to thank my colleague, Senator Tester, for his hard work and the efforts of a lot of people to put this legislation together. I would hope my colleagues would listen to why I think it is important this bill--with a lot of good points in it, which I favor strongly--needs to be sent back and fixed. The reason is this: The bill violates the Budget Control Act that we passed August a year ago. That has been certified by Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and his staff. It plainly, as often is the problem, spends more than the Budget Control Act allows to be spent. Chairman Conrad, as I said, has agreed with that assessment. No. 2, now this is the fourth bill brought before this Senate by the majority leader in the last 15 months that violates the budget. It is the fourth time. This is a time in which our country has never faced a more serious systemic budget crisis. We are on an unsustainable course. We know that. One of the things we need to do is figure out a way to constrain ourselves, and the Budget Control Act was a step in that direction. To raise the debt limit in August 2011--we had borrowed all the money we could borrow, and to raise the debt ceiling, the debt limit, the Budget Control Act was passed. It limited spending, and that was all part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling.…”