Political Quotes

“Madam President, my colleagues and any of the public watching the debate today know there is a great partisan divide thus far. Senator Wyden has already referred to the motion he and I are putting before the Senate. Senator Wyden, a Democrat, and I, a Republican, are joined also by Senator McCaskill, who is the Presiding Officer now, as well as Senator Collins, in this effort. It is the only bipartisan issue before the Senate this particular day. I emphasize that because I think the public ought to know that not everything in the Senate is partisan. Senator Wyden and I have been chipping away at the informal, backroom process known as secret holds in the Senate. We have been working on this for well over 10 years. So it should not surprise anybody that we are back again at the start of another Congress, joined, as I said, by Senator McCaskill of Missouri, who was very helpful in our pushing this issue to the forefront at the end of the last Congress, and, as I said, I am pleased that we have Senator Collins onboard again. There has been a lot of talk lately about the possibility of far- reaching reforms to how the Senate does business that have been hastily conceived and could shift the traditional balance between the rights of the majority and the rights of the minority parties. In contrast, our resolution by Senator Wyden and this Senator is neither of those two things. In other words, it does not shift any balance between the majority and the minority.…”