When people see the budget, they're going to say, 'Oh, my God, I wanted a tax cut, but I didn't know what you were going to do to health care and to Medicare and national defense.'
— John Breaux
I put myself and all the members of Congress in the same boat of things that could have been done better.
Any that is why I think any kind of a stimulus package is going to have to help people who are without work, without a job, help them have health insurance.
I am going to work with Tom Daschle. And I'll work with the Republican leaders and the president to try and come up with something that we can all be proud of.
My home was 25 miles from the gulf, and I did not want to see it become a shorefront property.
Well, Judy, I would hope in the new year, we could start thinking about politics not like it was the Super Bowl, where you always have to have one team that wins and the other team has to be a loser.
We don't suggest that because San Francisco lies on top of an earthquake fault that it should be moved.
I object to you using words like squander and pork. What is pork in one part of the country is an essential project in another part.
But we made a decision based on the fact that we have been up there a long time and that we feel that the seniority is important to the people of Louisiana.
I am pleased to see that information campaigns, such as the America's WETLAND effort, are getting the message out, and people are beginning to realize that wetlands loss in Louisiana affects us all.
Our struggle is to identify the sources of revenue and the means to obtain the funds. Without funds, all the planning and research studies can't help us.
When you have a Senate that is 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one independent, it's quite obvious that the only way we are going to get something done is if we work together.
It's proper and appropriate to remind the Chinese about what they get out of solid relations with the United States.
And the issues I think are important in Louisiana right now happen to be health care and education. And those are two areas that the federal government can play a very important role. And I think I can be effective in trying to help our state from the Washington scene.
But, at the same time, I think that there is room for economic stimulus in terms of accelerated depreciation to encourage businesses to invest and to grow and ultimately to hire more people again.
I needed to explain that Louisiana's coast accepts the drainage from two-thirds of the United States and, while the necessary levees constructed upstream have prevented floods, they have also contributed to problems downstream.
There is nothing wrong where we reach a point where maybe everybody could claim a victory. I think it would be good for the American people, which should be our first priority.
Yes, we have got to quit worrying about fighting each other and trying to figure out a way to work together.
