Political Quotes

“I am not supportive of the bill we will be voting on shortly relative to the labeling of GMOs, but I do admit the Senator is right in that this was an example of a group of Democrats and Republicans working on a solution that may end up getting the support of a supermajority of this body. That is the difference between what happened on the process of developing a GMO bill and the process of developing our response to the Zika epidemic. Everybody knows what happened here. We had a bipartisan compromise that passed the Senate. It went to a conference committee. Democrats were shut out of the conference committee. I am a member of that conference committee. There was no negotiation between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans on the conference committee threw out the bipartisan compromise that was negotiated here in the Senate in order to address the concerns of very conservative Members of the House Republican caucus, and the bill got loaded up with all of the things that Senator Durbin mentioned. At the top of the list was a ban on funding for Planned Parenthood, which Republicans on the conference committee knew would poison the well. They knew that by putting in a ban on funding for Planned Parenthood, they would make it impossible to pass the Zika supplemental request. We don't need to engage in hyperbole or histrionics. That is what happened.…”