Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we didn't have a chance to debate the change in rules, and we should have, so I am going to speak now on some things I think should have been said before we voted--not that it would have changed the outcome but because we ought to have known what we were doing before we vote rather than afterward. So I will spend a few minutes discussing what the majority leader did on the so-called nuclear option. Unfortunately, this wasn't a new threat. Over the last several years, every time the minority has chosen to exercise his rights under the Senate rules, the majority has threatened to change the rules. In fact, this is the third time in just the last year or so that the majority leader has said that if he didn't get his way on nominations, he would change the rules. Ironically, that is about as many judicial nominees as our side has stopped through a filibuster--three or so. Prior to the recent attempt by the President to simultaneously add three judges who are not needed to the DC Circuit, Republicans had stopped a grand total of 2 of President Obama's judicial nominees--not 10, as the Democrats had by President Bush's fifth year in office; not 34, as one of my colleagues tried to suggest earlier this week; no, only 2 had been stopped. If we include the nominees for the DC Circuit, we have stopped a grand total of 5--again, not 10, as the Democrats did in 2005; not 34, as one of my colleagues tried to argue earlier this week but 5.…”