Political Quotes

“as I try to do every year, if time permits--this will be my seventh year in the U.S. Senate; sometimes our work here finishes in a different fashion, but if possible, I try to come on the last day of the legislative year and give a speech to kind of recap the year behind us and outline the challenges of the year ahead. For me, it was, obviously, an eventful year, a productive one, and I believe it has been one for this Chamber, as well, in what is a unique political environment in which politics today is practiced and covered in ways we have never seen before--almost like entertainment. Nevertheless, it was a year that we got a lot of good things done, and I wanted to highlight some of them in the hope that this gives us momentum into the new year. This has been my first experience with a new President--obviously, not just a new President but a new administration that brought with it a set of individuals in different positions, so I think for all of us it was a transition in that regard. It also was the beginning of a second term, which, at one time, I didn't know I was even going to pursue. In arriving here earlier this year and getting to work, we slowly but surely got going on a number of key priorities that we had been working on for a very long time. The first one that happened was the VA accountability bill. This was a bill that I had been working on for a number of years.…”