Political Quotes

“Mr. President, when our colleagues arrive, I will be pleased to yield the floor to them, but I will be offering, after 3 o'clock, along with Senator Claire McCaskill, my Democratic colleague from Missouri, an amendment we voted on before in the Senate. It is an amendment that would establish 3-year discretionary spending caps, limits on how much we can spend, how much debt we can run up. To violate those limits, it would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate and the House to pass. So this is a spending limitation amendment that will have some teeth to it. It will allow us to have in effect a budget because it looks like, even in light of the incredibly disastrous financial crisis we are in, we will not pass a budget this year. We need to do that. But the House has not even moved one. One has been moved out of committee on a straight party-line vote, but there are indications we may not move it in the Senate, and if the House does not move, we will not have a budget. What our amendment would do is help fill that gap. That is another reason for it. It would set spending limits for 3 years. The limits we would set are the limits President Obama submitted as spending limits last time. I recall, of my colleagues, 59 Senators voted for it, 1 short of moving through the Senate, a few weeks ago. I will talk about that at 3. I see my colleague is here, Senator Johanns. I will be pleased to yield the floor. We will talk about this amendment later. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore.…”