Political Quotes

“The issue before this body is not a budget. The issue before this body is not going to conference. The issue before this body is one thing in particular: It is the debt ceiling and whether the Senate will be able to raise the debt ceiling using a procedural back door that would allow only 51 votes. My friend from Nevada, my friend from Washington State, both of them could go to conference on the budget right now today if they would simply agree this budget would not be used as a back door to use a procedural trick to raise the debt limit--not on 60 votes but on 50 votes. I commend their candor, because neither one of them is willing to make that representation, and that is commendable. But I would point out that nothing in the budget we debated raised the debt ceiling. I would suggest the American people are not interested in procedural games. I think they are tired of games by the Democrats and tired of games by the Republicans. What they are interested in is leadership in this body to address the enormous fiscal and economic challenges facing this country. Our national debt is nearly $17 trillion. It is larger than the size of our entire economy. In the last 4 years our economy has grown 0.9 percent a year, with 23 million people struggling to find jobs. This body should be debating every day how we get the economy moving, how we get people back to work, how we stop our unsustainable debt.…”