Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to talk about the continuing efforts by a minority of this body to block a Federal budget by blocking a conference with the House to find compromise. I spoke about this one week ago, but the stalemate continues. Today there was an announcement that in my Commonwealth, 90,000 civilian Department of Defense employees and hundreds of thousands of DOD civilians nationally will be furloughed for 11 days between now and the end of the year. This furlough announcement--along with ample other evidence we have discussed in this body in the last few weeks-- demonstrates that budgetary gridlock, budgetary indecision, and budgetary stalling has real-life consequences. I rise to implore my Senate colleagues to do what is right and to do the job the American public has sent us here to do. This is not only about budgets, it is also about something even bigger than budgets. It is about something fundamental to the entire system of government we have; that is, the willingness to work together to find common ground and find solutions. I truly view this budgetary stalemate as an attack on compromise. We cannot survive as a Senate or as a Congress or as a nation without finding common ground. I know the Presiding Officer, like me, was out on the campaign trail a lot in 2012. I heard a repeated critique of this body during the campaign. I heard that this body was unable to produce a budget since 2009.…”