Political Quotes

“I want to go back to what you were talking about in the supplemental, actually on the spending, as well as on the FISA reforms. This is a town of power and persuasion of leverage. I'm not sure we effectively know how to use leverage when we have it. We are a town that does things--a body that only does things when we have to, when there is a deadline and when there is the pressure. You talked about relieving the pressure on the FISA reforms because of the approaching deadline, the expiration of the current authorization. Why would we be so fearful of that expiration to the extent that we are unwilling to force upon the Senate the reforms that we are trying to pass out of the Judiciary Committee? The Judiciary Committee voted 35-2 on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis that would pass this body if we put it on the floor today. The Senate apparently isn't so worried about the expiration that we think they will take up our bill and pass it. There we would relieve the pressure to reform FISA so it doesn't expire. You can apply that to the debt situation. We did another continuing resolution where we extended the Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer policies and spending levels into mid-January and early February with the promise that we work on passing our remaining five bills. I am sorry to say and disappointed to acknowledge, we have not had any demonstrated effort to bring those remaining five bills to the floor.…”