Political Quotes

“I urge this body to vote for the budget agreement as worked out between the leaders of our parties and the President of our country. The alternative to this budget agreement is not the ideal from the Democrats' perspective nor the ideal from the Republicans' perspective. The alternative is to go on fighting, to go on fighting every single appropriation bill, every single tax measure, to reach no resolution, to have the President veto many of them, to struggle over whether or not they will be overridden, and with every showdown will come the threat of another shutdown. That is not what we want, and I know it is not what the country wants. The Republicans wanted $220 billion of tax cuts over 5 years. What they got was $135 billion, half of that, and $35 billion of that amount has to go in to education tax credits and deductions, which was a Democratic priority. The Democrats wanted a lot more money for nondefense domestic discretionary spending. They did not get it, but they got $189 billion more than was included in the Republican budget resolution of last year. That is a substantial increase. Politics has got to be the art of compromise. Neither of us is going to get everything we want. But what the country wants is us to start working together in their interest. They want the Democrats to realize that it is not our money but their money over which we have stewardship.”