The Ripon Society, a centrist Republican think tank, has issued this statement on the agreement to open the government and avert a shut down:
Statement of Jim Conzelman
President & CEO of The Ripon Society
On tonight’s agreement to reopen the government
& raise the debt limit“Winston Churchill once said that you can always count on the American people to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else. After two weeks of seemingly trying everything else, Congress tonight did the right thing – and the American people are grateful as a result. But make no mistake – the American people are angry, too. Angry that it got to this point, angry that it took so long to reach an agreement, and angry that political ideology appeared to be getting the better of common sense.
“Now that common sense has won the day, the challenge is to make sure that it also wins out in the weeks and months ahead, because – whether it’s reducing our debt, reforming our immigration system, or reshaping the Affordable Care Act in a way that really does control costs and serve all of the people — our problems are too great to let partisanship and ideology get the best of us again.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.