Political Quotes

“Madam President, Senate Democrats have been waiting a very long time to go to conference on our budget. In fact, it has now been 73 days. Until recently, we have gotten pretty used to Senate Republicans simply standing and saying no. For months Republicans have been offering a lot of excuses for why they do not want to go to conference on the budget. They have said they want a preconference ``framework,'' which, by the way, is what a budget is. They have said they would not allow us to go to conference unless we guaranteed that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations would be protected from paying a penny more in taxes. They said they did not want a bipartisan conference to take away the leverage they have on the debt ceiling. And then they called for a do-over, which, actually, my ranking member on Budget called for again this morning--to bring up the House budget, have 50 hours of debate, a whole new round of unlimited amendments, go through the process all over, and they did this after they praised the very open and thorough floor debate we had on the Senate budget. The story keeps changing. But even as some Republicans were focused on finding excuses to move us closer and closer to this crisis rather than have a budget deal, we have a number of Republicans who are now joining with us to call on regular order.…”