Political Quotes

“Madam President, I thought I would use this opportunity to inform our colleagues and anyone following this transportation debate as to where we are. Yesterday, we had an opportunity to stop the filibuster and get right to our bill and get it done and protect 1.8 million jobs and create another 1 million. We didn't do that--pretty much on a party line vote. The filibuster continues. The hopeful sign we had was right before the vote when the Republican leader said he was open to reaching an agreement. I was hopeful that agreement would not contain extraneous votes. I don't think that is going to happen. I think we are going to face extraneous votes--to repeal Clean Air Act rules, to open our States to drilling that rely on fishing and tourism and recreation when we know the oil companies have millions of acres they can drill on without going to these areas that are so essential to our economic future just as they are to our environmental future. It looks as though we are going to face that and a vote probably on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Again, I am very sad we could not come together when we have a bill that got an 85-to-11 vote to proceed to it. We still have to face a filibuster and still we had to lose two votes to cut off debate. But the Senate, being the Senate, this is it. So now we have to vote. The two leaders can agree.…”