Gridlock

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. REID. Mr. President, my friend the Republican leader is reciting facts that are not real. Everyone knows what has happened in this body and in the House of Representatives the last few years--gridlock. Republicans in the House cannot agree with Republicans in the Senate, and it appears Republicans in the Senate cannot agree among themselves. So for my friend to talk about how great things are going is not reality.

We need to start working together, not apart. And, working with Republicans, we find it is very difficult to develop any kind of partnerships, as we always did in the past until Republican leaders took over the Congress.

I would hope my friends the Republicans would understand we have to start doing things to help the country. We are in the situation we are in. It is September 30. The country will be out of money in just a few hours. Why do we wait until the last minute and then only provide enough money to get us to the first part of December?

We have received word that the House Speaker is going to resign. Why? He is resigning because everyone knows he cannot deal with the people he has to deal with in the House. He has tried very hard, and it hasn't worked.

I would hope my friend the Republican leader would start talking reality, not come in and boast about how great the country is doing under Republican leadership. We have gotten nothing done under the Republican leadership.

I am reminded of what Albert Einstein said when he defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That is what we have been doing here. We have votes on everything, everyone knowing what the results are going to be. The latest episode was--what a waste of our time--we had a vote here to defund Planned Parenthood. It didn't even get a majority of the Republicans--well, it got a majority of the Republicans; it certainly didn't get a majority of the Senate. It didn't get a majority of the Senate and certainly didn't get 60 votes, which they were trying to do--revoting on things, always knowing the results are going to be the same. It appears that Albert Einstein had a few organizations in mind when he gave this definition of ``insanity,'' and one of them, as he looked forward, would be this Republican Senate we have.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source