Political Quotes

“this has been an interesting discussion for the last 37 minutes. It lacks a little bit of a preamble. The reason we are in the situation we are in now is because Congress didn't do the spending bills when they were supposed to do the spending bills. We have 12 spending bills. There is no reason we didn't spend 12 weeks, 1 week doing each of those for a period of 12 weeks. It is the second most important job we have. I think the most important job we have is national defense, but budgeting--spending--is the next biggest. If we had done one bill each week for the 12 weeks we needed to and had open amendments on them, there wouldn't have needed to be any of this discussion. Most of the things would have been resolved by now. They would have either won or lost, and that is what happens around here. Except we are busy dealmaking instead of legislating. We don't allow amendments now. When a bill comes to the floor, there is a discussion between the two leaders to see how limited they can make the amendments. I try to only do relevant amendments. I wouldn't mind if that were the law around here. That is the law in the Wyoming legislature. Whatever the title of the bill is, your amendment has to be relevant to that. It helps to get through a lot of the process in a hurry. But we don't even bring them up. I take that back. The leader did come to the floor and chastise me for forgetting we had the Transportation bill brought up on the floor.…”