The final week of September has been overwhelmingly dominated by internal Democratic Party division threatening to derail a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and President Joe Biden’s wider “Build Black Better” agenda, including Democrats’ go-it-alone sweeping budget reconciliation bill of up to $3.5 trillion.
In particular, centrist Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have proved to be roadblocks. Earlier in the week, senior Pentagon and military officials faced the music on Afghanistan.
Here are the quotes of the week.
“Renominating you means gambling that, for the next five years, a Republican majority at the Federal Reserve with a Republican chair who has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street won’t drive this economy over a financial cliff again.”
– Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, tells Fed Chair Jerome Powell that she won’t support his renomination.
“Chicago is where I found the purpose I’d been seeking. Chicago is where everything most precious to me begins.”
– Former President Barack Obama at the groundbreaking of his new presidential center in Chicago.
“My dad didn’t get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima, and those kids there at Abbey Gate, they don’t get a choice to resign. And I’m not going to turn my back on them. They can’t resign, so I’m not going to resign. There’s no way. If the orders are illegal, we’re in a different place. But if the orders are legal from civilian authority, I intend to carry them out.”
– Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Senate testimony Tuesday responding to a question from Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, who asked why Milley didn’t resign when Biden rejected his advice on Afghanistan.
“We can count all the planes, trucks and automobiles and cars and machine guns and everything else. We can count those from space and all the other kind of intel assets. But you can’t measure the human heart with a machine, you got to be there.”
– Milley on the lack of morale and fighting spirit from the Afghan forces in Senate testimony Tuesday.
“We made them too dependent on technology, too dependent on our capabilities. We didn’t take in the cultural aspects perhaps as much as we should have.”
– Milley on the Afghan army, in Senate testimony Tuesday.
“We helped build a state … but we could not forge a nation.”
– Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on the failure of the war in Afghanistan.
“I can’t keep a commitment that the Senate has made impossible to do.”
– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, floating the idea she would have to postpone the infrastructure vote.
“You seem to be very happy failing up over there. But if we didn’t have a president that was so addled, you all would be fired. Because that is what you deserve.”
– Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, tells Gens. Milley and McKenzie what he thinks of their Afghanistan advice.
“The call on how to do that and when to do it is really a State Department call. We provided input … to the State Department. Their concerns were, rightfully, that, No. 1, they were being cautioned by the Ghani administration that if they withdrew American citizens and [Special Immigrant Visa] applicants at a pace that was too fast, it would cause a collapse of the government that we were trying to prevent.”
– Austin suggests it was on the State Department that the evacuation of American citizens from Afghanistan didn’t begin sooner.
“I can only say if they are not scared, let us meet in the sky.”
– People’s Liberation Army Deputy Air Force Commander Wang Wei responds to U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s pledge last month to develop weapons that “scare China.”
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity.”
– Sen. Joe Manchin on the Biden administration’s spending package.
“This is how democracy works. I know it feels foreign because there wasn’t much that happened over the last couple of years.”
– White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“I’ve never been a liberal in any way shape or form. There’s no one who ever thought I was …. I have voted pretty consistently my whole life. I don’t fault any of them who believe that they are much more progressive or liberal. God bless them. And all they need to do, is we have to elect more, I guess, for them to get theirs, elect more liberals.”
– Manchin on the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
“This is what happens when you have a president and a treasury secretary who are on a mission from God to please pink-haired wokers who carry around Ziploc bags of kale. This is what happens when you have a president and a secretary who want to tax, spend, and regulate America into neo-socialism.”
– Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, while speaking with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“You’ve made these decisions — a lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and un-American. You, sir, are ignoring the science.”
– Sen. Rand Paul takes HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to task.
“The whole ‘Democrats in disarray’ narrative is such a phony, silly narrative. Democrats are a coalition. We are not a cult.”
– New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.
“To whoever the f*** doesn’t like the United States of America, may God bless you, but f*** you at the same time.”
– Pitbull, the Grammy Award-winning artist, professed his love for America and his disdain for those who dislike it at a recent concert.
“We’re gonna get this done. It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter if it’s six minutes, six days, or six weeks.”
– Biden after heading to the Capitol on Friday to speak to congressional Democrats about the spending bills.
