On the recordOctober 1, 2013
This dog does not hunt. The cow has left the barn. This is absurd. I rise today to urge Congress to put aside partisan politics. We are playing a dangerous game that the majority of Americans agree is time to end. While certainly Congress needs to fix the Affordable Care Act--of course. I've signed on to several of these bills; we want to make this work. But what is true is that this is behind us. We can neither go back nor start again. We need to fix what we have. Instead of finding commonsense solutions, all we are doing is letting people go home and not respond to those needs. In Florida alone, 90,000 folks are going to be sent home. Not passing the legislation closes critical parks that are essential to tourism and hurts agencies that are essential to driving trade and commerce. This is ridiculous, and it is beneath the dignity of this body. We've heard a lot of things from the other side here. I understand messaging so that we can make the argument, but what needs to be done is we need to sit. I sat with my colleagues on the other side just yesterday. You can see the angst in their eyes. But unfortunately, they have been taken hostage by extremist elements in their party. The time has come to put these guys aside and come to a deal. We can fix a lot of these problems. We've cut government spending. We can do more of it. We can make government more efficient. We can fix the sequester and give agencies more flexibility. We agree with all of that on this side.…
Source
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