Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Illinois, I was presiding for about a half hour. I was not planning on speaking. I know my staff right now is getting very nervous that I am speaking on the floor of the Senate without their knowledge, but I do want to say a couple things. I say to the Senator, one, he is absolutely right on unemployment benefits and what we need to do in the next day or so. But I want to go back to his first comment. I was at the meeting yesterday with the President, and I sat next to Senator Alexander and heard the question on the oilspill issue. The comment from the Republican leader was that the President just brushed it aside. I am not here to defend the President. He can do his own job defending himself. But the point was, we were doing everything in a very bipartisan way on the oilspill. Tomorrow we have another briefing with the Coast Guard. We had a briefing yesterday. There is a committee meeting I am supposed to be at right now on some liability issues around the Deepwater and what is going on with offshore. There are meetings all over this place. I know the Republican leader was not at the meeting, so I am sure he got the information secondhand. But I was. It was not brushed off. I think all of us, I do not care what State we are from--I am from an oil and gas State--believe in the development of oil and gas, but we are all concerned about the problems down in the gulf and the tragedy and the 11 lives that were lost there.…”