Political Quotes

“Mr. President, for the benefit of those who are tuned in on C-SPAN in their offices, what we are now in is what is called postcloture on the nomination of Patricia Smith to serve as Solicitor of Labor. This is a nominee who came before our committee almost a year ago, in April. It has been held up and held up. Yesterday, the Senate voted cloture because it was being filibustered--yet another filibuster by our Republican friends. So we had a vote last night, and cloture was invoked by 60 votes. Now we are in the period of what they call postcloture, 30 hours of postcloture. We will have a final vote up or down for Patricia Smith to be Solicitor of Labor. If she got 60 votes last night on cloture, it is obvious she certainly has more than 51 votes to take the position as Solicitor of Labor. That is where we are. We are in this 30 hours. Again, it raises the question in my mind, why are we chewing up 30 hours? We know the votes are there. We voted on cloture last night. Yet our colleagues on the Republican side are insisting that we just chew up time. For what purpose? We have the lights going, the heat is on, all our staffs are here, and no one else is on the floor. So why do we run this 30 hours and waste taxpayers' money and waste all this time when we know what the vote is going to be? We have been through all this. Patricia Smith has had her hearings. I thought we had a pretty good debate yesterday.…”