Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from Maryland for her tremendous leadership. She is absolutely correct--we are here in a manufactured crisis. This Senate and the House passed a budget last spring. For 6 months we have been trying to get those two budgets together to conference a deal to set our budget priorities for the next several years. We have been precluded from doing that by the same Republicans who now want to kill a continuing resolution that will simply keep our government open for a few short weeks so we can do the work we should have been doing for the last 6 months. The answer to this is easy. Let's pass a clean resolution, keep the government open for a few short weeks, do the responsible thing, say to the Nation and to the world that we will pay our bills and raise the debt ceiling, and then do what we need to do, what every one of us knows we need to do, which is to work out the differences between the House and the Senate budgets. But we are here in a manufactured crisis because the same Republicans who are now leading us to a shutdown are saying they don't want us to talk. I agree with the Senator from Maryland. Keep the clean resolution, send it to the House, keep government open, and do what we should do as leaders and adults and come to a budget agreement.…”