Political Quotes

“I find it extremely ironic that we are here right now hearing that the House of Representatives is going to shut down the government and then send us a bill saying they want to talk in a conference committee. Let's remember why we are here right now with the threat of a shutdown where thousands of families and communities are going to be hurt. We passed a budget in the Senate 6 months ago. The House of Representatives passed a budget in the House 6 months ago. The goal was to go together in conference, work out our disagreements, define the funding levels for the coming fiscal year so we would not be sitting tonight, minutes away from a shutdown. The right thing to have done would have been to go to conference anytime in that last 6 months, as we asked for 18 times, but were told no by the same people who are now sitting on the other side of the aisle and saying: No, they want to shut government down. Why do they want to do that? They want to create a crisis because they think they are going to get something. We know going to a conference means that we have to compromise. That is what a conference is. But we are not going to do it with a gun to our head that says we are shutting government down. We are going to conference over a short little 6-week CR? We have to deal with the longer term budget. We have asked many times to go to conference on that. We stand ready to go to work on making compromises for our long-term fiscal crisis.…”