Political Quotes

“Reserving the right to object, and I would offer an alternative; but before I do that, I wish to say to my colleagues in the U.S. Senate that, first of all, there is controversy about this nominee. Let's make that clear. And second, the majority leader said maybe the people of this country don't really understand what is going on. They understand what is going on. We are working under the rules that the majority changed by ignoring the rules of the U.S. Senate in November. So as the majority leader knows, we have not yielded back postcloture time on judicial nominations since the so-called nuclear option was triggered last November. We have followed the rules of the U.S. Senate for regular order on all judges before the Senate in the last 5 months, just exactly the way the rules were changed in November. So there is 30 hours of postcloture debate on this nomination. Therefore, I would ask the consent request be modified so that the vote on confirmation would occur at 5:30 p.m., Monday, April 28, when we return from the April recess. This would allow the Senate to process the pending cloture nomination on the wage and hour nominee this afternoon and set that confirmation vote also for Monday, when we return on April 28. That is the alternative I offer to the majority. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the majority leader so modify his request?”