Political Quotes

“Madam President, I want to speak for a few minutes about the START treaty. Before I do, there is another issue that has been debated on this floor that we are going to continue debating over the next several days, and that is the issue of the funding of the Federal Government. There is an omnibus bill that has been laid out there now, which is something that happens from time to time that is simply not the way business ought to be done in this body. As we move into the debate on the omnibus bill, there are a lot of us who want to see, obviously, the government remaining open and running at full speed. All of us within this body want to make sure as we do that, we do it the right way. Frankly, to run in an omnibus bill at the last minute out here that has thousands of earmarks--some of which folks like me requested months and months ago, and until 2 or 3 days ago had no idea those requests would be honored and are now included in there, amounting to billions of dollars. With the issues we have now, including the election that took place on November 2 where the American people spoke loudly and clearly about the way Washington spends money, this is not the way to do business. I intend to vote against the omnibus bill. I will speak more about that at a later date.…”