Political Quotes

“Madam President, I understand our Democratic leader is meeting with the Republican Speaker of the House and the White House and working to try to establish the funding level we will have for the rest of this fiscal year that ends September 30. Let me explain, briefly, how we got here. Our Democratic majority in the Senate failed to pass a spending level last year--failed to pass a single appropriations bill last year and, at the start of the fiscal year, voted a continuing resolution for 5 months. In the course of all that, there was a national election and the most driving force in that election was the American people's deep concern about reckless Washington spending and surging debt that they know is endangering the American economy, can reduce growth, cause a debt crisis and put us on an unsustainable path and burden our children and grandchildren with massive debt, the likes of which we have not seen before. The continuing resolution that passed at the start of the fiscal year carried us 5 months of the 12-month fiscal year. I suppose, after the shellacking the big spenders took last fall--the biggest shellacking in 80 years--huge numbers of individuals got elected to the House and a large number to the Senate who are committed to containing spending-- there should have been no doubt that when we came to decide how much spending we would have the last 7 months of the fiscal year, that there would be proposals to reduce spending.…”