Political Quotes

“Madam President, I come to the floor to speak for a few minutes on the bill we are debating to provide some congressional oversight over a potential--though not yet signed--deal with Iran. I wish to start simply with what we all agree on. We all agree we need to do whatever we can to ensure that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. I have no doubt that 100 Members of the Senate would agree with that proposition. That is our guiding principle, and it should be our North Star. We may disagree on the best way to achieve a nuclear weapons-free Iran, but we can all agree on our goal. So how do we get there is the question we are debating. I happen to be a member of the camp who believes our best hope of achieving this goal is through diplomacy, through a negotiated settlement that dramatically rolls back Iran's nuclear program in a transparent and verifiable way. While our negotiations still have a long way to go to get to that agreement, we are closer now than we have been in decades. I, and many of my colleagues, strongly believe we should give our negotiators the space to do their jobs and to see if a deal is ultimately possible. That is really what this bill does. It postpones a congressional vote on these negotiations, appropriately, until the negotiations are finished. That makes sense, right? There is no use on voting on a deal when we don't have a deal. And then it sets up time constraints for Congress's review of that potential deal, basically, about 30 days.…”