Political Quotes

“I would like to talk about election reform. I have talked about it on a number of occasions. Yesterday, as chairman of the Rules Committee, we had a markup of one of the election reform bills. I say with a high degree of sadness--and I truly mean this--that our good friends on the Republican side of the aisle decided for whatever reasons not to show up; to sort of boycott the markup. I haven't had that experience in my 20 years in the Senate and 6 years in the House. I gather that it may have happened on other committees but never on ones on which I served. Again, I understand there is disappointment sometimes when our amendments or our bills are not going to be marked up, or are not going to have the necessary votes to be marked up. I had scheduled the markup well in advance with full notice. There are some 16 election reform bills that I know of which have been introduced in the Senate. We didn't mark up all of them. We marked up one bill. It was open for amendment, or substitution, as is the normal process. As I have been both in the majority and minority, over the years that is how it has been done. In the Rules Committee you cannot vote by proxy. You have to be there for the final vote. You can only vote by proxy on amendments. We had the convening of the markup at 9:00 in the morning with the full idea that at least an hour-and-a-half would be available for people to come and offer amendments, debate, or discuss the issue of election reform.”