Political Quotes

“let me express my very sincere gratitude to both leaders, first of all to Senator Daschle and his very fine staff who were immensely helpful in pulling this together. I thank the Republican leader, Senator Lott, for his wonderful leadership. He has been tremendously helpful to us in putting this agreement together. I also thank Senator McConnell and Senator Bond and their staffs for making it possible. Senator Lott's office worked very closely with their offices in bringing us to this point. We have had an awful lot of amendments. This bill had already handled some 35 or 40 amendments. We then had to lay the bill aside, and there was still an outstanding list of 40 or 45 amendments. This is a much more abbreviated list, and it will allow us to get to final passage on this bill. I am very optimistic we will end up with a positive vote in the Senate on this very important issue of election reform. It has been a little more than a year since the election of 2000. As we have said, this bill is forward looking. It is not about what happened in 2000; rather, what had been happening for many years in regard to the deteriorating condition of our election structure in the country. Florida merely highlighted for many Americans what had happened in many of the States as well. This bill, while not a complete answer, will put us on a very strong road to resolving a lot of the outstanding issues that occurred then.”