Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have had an opportunity to listen closely to my friend Senator Kaine, who asked the important question about voting rights, about when--when are we going to act? And that is a question that is something that we, each of us, need to ask ourselves is ``when.'' But I think we also need to keep in mind the ``how'' we act because I think how we act is important--because I think we recognize that when we act unilaterally as a party on issues that are of great weight and great political debate in this country, that solutions to these difficult problems come best when we are able to be working together. I know that we are very fractured in this body, and it has made it hard, but hard does not mean it is impossible. It is only impossible if we give up, and we say it can't be done. To my friend from Montana--and I appreciate the commonsense words of a man of the earth, a good farmer--amen to what you said about this body and our dysfunctionality. We are not the same Senate that I came to close to 20 years ago. I beat you by about 5 years, 6 years. We are not that same body. We are not operating in the manner with which I think we really were designed to be--that tempering body, that deliberative body. We are supposed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, and we don't demonstrate that on any single day out there. But I question whether or not changing the rules actually works to change the attitude because that is what I think we have going on here.…”