Political Quotes

“Madam President, I want to speak for a few minutes on the progress we are making on the immigration bill. In speaking about the progress, it also gives me a chance to say to my colleagues on this side of the aisle that I hope we can get an agreement to vote on amendments this afternoon, because it is not only Democrats who want amendments, we have got a lot of Republicans who want to put up some amendments. If we can get this tranche of amendments out of the way, then that gives us a chance to put up another tranche of 8 to 10 amendments is what I think we have the possibility of doing. We have been on this bill for 1 week. We had one vote last week. That was on my own amendment. That dealt with border security. Of course, that vote was not a vote up or down on the amendment, it was a vote to table. We were refused by the majority to have an up-or-down vote on legislation that is part of the legislation that is some of the most important to the people of this country, securing the border before we have legalization. I quoted yesterday a CNN poll that said 60 percent of the people say border security is the No. 1 issue as far as immigration is concerned. It is a necessary predecessor to legalization. Yesterday we had three votes. Unfortunately, they were 60-vote thresholds. Obviously, most of the time you have a 60-vote threshold, it is set up so that any amendment under that rule would fail. Yesterday the majority leader threatened again to keep us working all weekend.…”