Political Quotes

“A funny thing happened before the Memorial Day recess. We finally did something around here. I say 'a funny thing' because we haven't done that much to write home about. What happened was we had the juvenile justice bill come before this body. It was debated. Amendments were offered. Votes were taken. The Senate passed the bill by a large bipartisan majority. I think that is the way we ought to be doing our business rather than having a bill brought up and having the so-called amendment tree filled to prevent those of us on this side of the aisle from bringing up amendments. I think the way the juvenile justice bill was handled was good. I hope we see more of that openness on the floor of the Senate. When we had the juvenile justice bill before us, we did some good things. One of the good things we did was to pass some commonsense gun laws. Now, after a 2-week break, the House is going to be taking up the juvenile justice bill and looking at these gun laws and deciding on which of them they are going to move forward. From the reports I read in the paper today--I haven't read the House bill yet, although we are going over it now--those gun laws are significantly weakened. I say to my friends in the House, where I proudly served for 10 years, if anything, you should strengthen those laws, not weaken those laws.”