Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair. Madam President, I listened this week to the distinguished chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Mikulski, make a compelling case for passing a clean, short-term continuing resolution through November 15 of this year so we can get on with the business of debating and passing appropriations bills. We have a lot of sound and fury here signifying nothing, to quote Shakespeare, but we ought to vote up or down on something. It is easy to give speeches or phony filibusters or whatever and say: Look what we are accomplishing. No. It is not accomplishing anything. I agree with everything the chairwoman has said, particularly about the bipartisan way the committee has written and reported bills this year. Any one of those bills could be debated and voted on today. Vote yes, vote no--but vote. Conference them with the House, if they pass, and send them to the President. Actually, there is some precedent for doing that--a precedent of over 200 years doing it that way. Instead, we are repeating this all-too-familiar drama where we are again in a high-stakes stalemate over simply keeping the Federal Government functioning. What was once the regular business of Congress has again been replaced by political theater and another artificial made-in-Congress crisis that threatens the economy and, in ways large and small, threatens every single family in America.…”