Political Quotes

“I rise today to try, with my colleagues, to put an end to the double shutdown threat. There are two shutdown threats existing right now in the U.S. Capitol. One is a threat by certain Members in the House majority to shut the government down at the end of the month. That would be foolish. It would hurt people unnecessarily. It would be particularly foolish given the existence of Federal law that says Federal employees get paid even during a shutdown. How would it be fiscally conservative to shut the government down, lock Federal employees out of their offices, disable them from serving their fellow Americans, and then pay them? So we need to put an end to any risk of shutdown or threat of shutdown, and, in fact, it is a bad-faith tactic even to raise it. The second shutdown we need to avert is the shutdown of military promotions, and that is what I want to address today. The senior Senator from Alabama has held up political nominations of more than 300 senior military officers for months. I have spoken about this numerous times on the Senate floor, and yet it is getting more and more severe every day. This is the behavior of one Senator who has placed a hold on these nominations, but, frankly, it is behavior that is being enabled by his colleagues on the Republican side of this body.…”