Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is the deadline by which Congress is supposed to have enacted its annual budget resolution. As a former member of the Budget Committee, I take that responsibility very seriously, and I know the Speaker, the former chairman of that committee, does as well. So it saddens me that the House majority is now abdicating that responsibility. I come from local government where we had to work on a bipartisan basis to adopt and balance budgets every year. Yet, rather than work with Democrats to advance a budget resolution that reflects the spending levels of the hard-fought 2-year bipartisan budget agreement adopted just 5 months ago, House Republicans have decided not to pass a resolution at all because some in their caucus want to undo that bipartisan agreement. Budgets are values-based documents, but they don't have to represent just one set of values. They can be inclusive and should represent the broad diversity of the interests of the people we represent. Working together, we can demonstrate the power of government to spur economic growth, provide for national security, and meet the needs of our people. Mr. Speaker, one only has to look at the growing costs of the Zika virus, the opioid addiction problem, and the Flint water crisis to realize the cost of doing nothing. ____________________”