Political Quotes

“yesterday I spoke on the floor about the Democratic bill to reduce interest rates on student loans, and I was lamenting the fact that our Republican colleagues would not even permit us to turn to the bill. They were filibustering a motion to proceed to the bill which meant we could no longer work on it. That is why this floor today is so empty. We should have been here working on a student loan bill which is so critical to so many college students and their families across the country. The interest rates on these student loans, which are the Stafford loans, the Federal subsidized loans, is going to go from 3 percent to 6 percent. We want to get it back down. This is important to 7.5 million students and their families. When I concluded my remarks, Senator Brown from Massachusetts took to the floor. He expressed shock that I was concerned about Republican filibusters and started to talk about how cooperative the Republicans have been, pointing to a few issues where we have worked together. Look, I am here to say that working together in a bipartisan manner on a few issues is fine, but we need to work together in a bipartisan manner on almost all the issues we work on because the American people are counting on us. Because there are a handful of issues on which the Republicans cooperated, let's not come down to the floor and say everything is perfect and Republicans are not blocking us, when, in fact, they are blocking us.…”