Political Quotes

“Madam President, I wish to address the distinguished chairman of this subcommittee. Working with Senator Alexander on this bill has been a very good experience for me, and I think my friend knows that. We take great pride in getting things done. I very much appreciate his mentioning the standoff on the nuclear cruise missile legislation in some form of analogy, but I will say this: I have been in this body a long time, as has the Senator from Tennessee, and we both know that not everybody gets their vote. It just doesn't work that way. I can remember having an amendment on a bill year after year after year, and I never got a vote for it. That is not an unusual thing to happen. What has been unusual is to have one person take down a bill--particularly an appropriations bill. We were hoping we could demonstrate that we worked out our difficulties with this legislation. The Senator from Tennessee gave on some points, and I gave on some points. As my friend was good enough to mention, one of the points I gave on is something that I consider to be a very big issue which has not yet been settled, and that is a standoff nuclear cruise missile--and it has not yet been satisfactorily demonstrated to me that it is necessary--and that we do not have a satisfactory conventional weapon that can go through air defense systems. I believe we do. In any event, there is a strong constituency that feels as I do.…”