Political Quotes

“just as a point of clarification, I am a member of the committee that heard these amendments, particularly the one on Israel's right to exist. They were available to me at the time. I chose not to offer them in consultation with the Senators who worked so hard to put them together. I could have offered my amendment in the committee. I did not in order to work in a cooperative way to move it from the committee onto the floor. I will admit that I did not speak to Senator Cardin about this in particular, but I was told by multiple Members that the right place and the right time for me to offer this amendment would be on the floor, not in the committee, because the hope was to get it to the floor as quickly as possible. So in an effort to move this issue to the floor, I held back on filing this particular amendment with regard to Israel's right to exist on the assurances and on the conversations that we had that, in fact, when we got to the floor, these amendments would be heard. Now, if, in fact, it turns out that today is not going to be the day we vote on the amendment, I understand that. I know there are a lot of other people with ideas they want voted on. My understanding is and I have been told that there is potentially the effort here to say we shouldn't have any amendment or just have three or four amendments, and I think that is an unfair position to take. I am not saying that is what the Senator from Maryland is arguing.…”