Political Quotes

“Mr. President, Senator McConnell has made a very important call to restore the Senate as the great deliberative body it was intended to be. I would like to continue to add my voice to that call. In fact, I am going to expand on some observations I made previously before the Senate, I believe in the month of December last year. The Senate is a unique body designed with a very unique purpose in mind. In the Federalist Paper 62, attributed to the father of the Constitution James Madison, the unique role of the Senate is explained this way: The necessity of a Senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions. When Madison talks about ``factious leaders'' and ``intemperate and pernicious resolutions,'' he basically means what we call partisanship and the ``my way or the highway'' approach to legislating all too common these days. What might come as a shock to anyone who has followed the Senate lately is the fact that the Senate was specifically designed to check partisan passions and ensure that Americans of all stripes are fairly represented through a deliberative process. Clearly, the Senate is not fulfilling the role the Framers of the Constitution intended, in recent years. To find out what went wrong, we first have to examine how the Senate was supposed to function.…”