Patrick Leahy: “the situation we are in right now is interesting. It is different from any similar period I can recall in nearly 26…”

“the situation we are in right now is interesting. It is different from any similar period I can recall in nearly 26 years in the Senate. We are at the end of the fiscal year--we have actually gone beyond the end of the fiscal year--and nothing seems to be happening. I voted against the continuing resolution, not because I do not think we should keep the Government going--of course we should; it is unfortunate to close down the Government--but more to express my concern that we are not doing our business. We have not passed our appropriations bills as we should. We all talk about how we make Government more efficient or how we make Government better. But imagine if you are running one of these Agencies or one of these Departments and you have to make the decisions for the year, and Congress, which has a mandate under law to pass the appropriations bills by September 30, we are here on October 5 and are nowhere near completing the bills. Yet in a Congress that spends more time investigating than legislating, we are perfectly willing to have investigations and actually bring a lot of these Departments to a halt while we ask them question after question, even if the questions have already been asked, and yet we are unwilling to do our own work on time. It is not the way it can be done, and it is not the way it should be done.”