Political Quotes

“in 2005--May of that year--the Senate faced a crisis that seems very familiar and very much like the one we face today in this body. Very simply, the Senate was unable to approve judges, which threatened to incapacitate a coequal branch of our government, the U.S. judiciary, and it confronted the threat of what came to be called the nuclear option, a change in the rules that would have wrecked the collegiality and civility that have characterized this body. Members of both parties recognized that the situation was untenable, and they recognized as well that the American court system was too important for the Senate to simply stop approving judges and suspend that very important constitutional responsibility on behalf of this body. At the time, 14 Senators came together to find a solution. They came to be known as the Gang of 14--7 Republicans and 7 Democrats. I want to read their names for the record because I think their conduct characterized what is really perhaps best about this institution. They were Senators Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, John McCain of Arizona, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and John Warner of Virginia. What they devised was a quite simple solution.…”