Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we are back on the floor with the Energy Policy Modernization Act--an act that many of us have spent a considerable amount of time not only here on the floor discussing but, prior to its arrival on the floor of the Senate, working through a process that, quite honestly, I am very pleased to be able to report on. As we have just heard, with the voice vote that we just took en bloc, we have accepted and adopted 29 additional amendments to this broad, bipartisan, and, as some would suggest, long-stalled Energy bill. We have been working on this now on the floor for more than 2 months. It actually first came to the floor on January 27 of this year. But we have seen patience, a little bit of persistence, and a truly good-faith negotiation. Last week we were able to clear the last of the objections to this bill and to define a path forward. Again, we just reached unanimous consent on these 29 additional amendments. There will be eight rollcall votes this afternoon and then votes on cloture and final passage, and, hopefully, today we will see the last day of debate on our Energy bill. Since we have been away from EPMA for so long, I wanted to start my comments this afternoon by reminding colleagues of the process we have followed and of the many good provisions we have incorporated within the bill that make it worthy of the Senate's support.…”