Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank all my colleagues, in particular my colleague from Iowa but also the people who are very senior leaders of this body: Senator McConnell, Senator Reid, and my friend on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, whom I have served with for 35 years. I thank them for their kind words and for what they said about my service to the people of Iowa as an elected representative. I have interacted with tens of thousands of Iowans as their Senator, so I have a feeling that I know each Iowan personally at this point. Of course, I don't. I know that is technically impossible, but one of the benefits of a State that is not especially big geographically is that I have enough planning that I can get to every county every year, as has been said several times by my colleagues. Every year, Iowans in each county host me at a question-and-answer session at their factories, schools, or their service clubs. Most of these are my own town meetings that I set up. At each stop, I might get a dozen or so questions on any topic under the Sun, and that is as it should be in representative government because that is a two-way street. The electorate's job is to ask the questions and my job is to answer them.…”