Political Quotes

“at the start of the year, when Vice Chair Collins and I took over as leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, we announced something ambitious: We were going to return the committee to regular order. The first thing everyone told us was: That is great. We all want to return to regular order. We all want to show the American people that Congress can actually function; that we can work together and solve problems and pass bills to make their lives better. But the second thing they told us was essentially: Good luck. You are going to need it. Well, Vice Chair Collins and I went to work. We said: Look, if this is going to happen, we have to show we are serious about writing these bills that can actually be signed into law. That meant a few things. First of all, it meant we had to work with the funding levels in the debt ceiling deal struck by President Biden and Speaker McCarthy, a deal that I had--and I still have--concerns about and which required tough funding decisions across each of our 12 bills. But the President and Speaker shook hands, and that is the agreement that Congress passed into law. We can't produce serious bills if we start by throwing that framework out the window. Secondly, it meant we had to work together to find common ground, including on tough and thorny issues, and compromise where necessary to produce spending bills that could make it through both Chambers and to the President's desk.…”