Political Quotes

“I will speak to the legislation that has been placed before us this afternoon, the Department of Justice reauthorization bill or, as it is officially titled, the 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act. I begin by putting this in the context of what I would call priorities. We are now less than 2 weeks, probably, from closing the session of this Congress, and there is a great deal of unfinished business to which we need to attend. As a matter of fact, we are bringing this legislation up--I should say the majority leader has brought this legislation up--deferring, for our consideration, the bill that is currently on the floor, the homeland defense reorganization bill that the President asked us to deal with about 3 months ago. That bill has now been on the floor of the Senate for at least a month, and we still have not even voted on the President's proposal. This DOJ, or Department of Justice, reauthorization bill has a lot of important provisions in it. I am going to get to those in a moment. But in terms of priorities, it seems to me the reauthorization of a Department which has not been reauthorized for more than two decades, and clearly is going to continue to operate--that is, the Department of Justice--is a little bit lower priority, at this point in this legislative session, than voting on the President's homeland reorganization legislation.”