Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have been listening to this debate, not just today but for 61 days as we have been working extremely hard to get the budget passed and go to conference so we can work with our House colleagues--and, by the way, the majority are Republicans. We are working to do that because the American people have been very loud about not managing by crisis. We all know that what will happen if we don't go to conference is exactly what the Senator from Utah has been saying he doesn't want. If we go to conference we will have an open conference committee to discuss the differences between the House and the Senate budgets. They will then give those instructions to the conference committee on how to move forward on our appropriations bills that we are now looking at and how we are going to deal with sequestration. It will be an open debate that will come back here. If we are not allowed to go to conference--we do have to pass our appropriations and spending bills or move to a continuing resolution because we can't if we don't get a budget deal--we are going to have to have a closed-door and secret discussion to figure out what we are going to do when the debt ceiling hits. It will come down on them in the middle of the night, and they will not have had an opportunity to be a part of it because of the delay that is occurring right now.…”