Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I appreciate the strong vote that we had yesterday, 90 to 4, to advance and continue debate on S. 2657. Just after that vote was concluded, I laid down a substitute amendment that contains the full text of the bipartisan American Energy Innovation Act. Having done that, we would normally begin the process of voting on amendments, whether by voice or by rollcall in this so- called regular order. We certainly have no shortage of options. We have some 200 amendments that have now been filed to the bill. What we are missing is a little bit of cooperation so that we can actually reach consent and move to votes. We could not reach agreement to have votes throughout the course of this week from Monday until, effectively, now. It has been frustrating. Both Senator Manchin and I have been working to try to facilitate that. We want to take amendments. The leader wants us to take amendments. We have a good bill. We think we have a pretty strong bill, but we know that it is always possible to make it better by gathering those ideas from colleagues who have not been part of the process on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. We want to address those priorities from as many Members as we can. While we were blocked on votes this week, our staffs have been working together--Senator Manchin's and mine--to develop a modified substitute that will add to the original text. We now have a total of 18 filed amendments that will be included as part of the underlying text.…”