Political Quotes

“I appreciate my friend's response. I urged that yesterday in the Rules Committee. Aside from your subcommittee holding a hearing this Thursday at 3, we were advised by the chair that there would be no further business of the Rules Committee. So I assumed, if that is the case, that we won't be going back to the Rules Committee. And I am sure that the budget, if it were to be here by Friday, would require a rule. Despite all of these things, I empiricize the fact that it doesn't appear that we will have a budget by Friday. Mr. Speaker, here is how we got to this point: last fall Republicans and Democrats came together to pass a bipartisan budget agreement. Now, however, Republicans are refusing to support their party's own budget proposal. Now, I understand what my friend said about negotiations going on, and that is good. It would be helpful if those negotiations were going on with Democrats in the room as well. I was very optimistic, as I am sure all of us were and, to a relative degree, still are, when Speaker Ryan promised to end Republican obstructionism and return to regular order. I felt very optimistic about that. It seemed that the now-dubbed do-nothing Congress is back and, with it, total dysfunction on the Republican side of the aisle. The dysfunction is so bad that Republicans cannot even agree to a budget number that they have already agreed to. Now, Democrats don't want to weaken the financial protections keeping our economy stable and strong.…”