Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the day after tomorrow, on Wednesday, we are going to have three cloture votes. These cloture motions were filed before we broke in October. Those will be the first three votes of our returning this fall. Those three cloture votes are, of course, motions to proceed--a motion to proceed on an energy bill, a motion to proceed on the paycheck fairness bill, and a motion to proceed on the food safety bill. Mr. President, the food safety bill came out of my committee, the HELP Committee, on November 18 of last year. We have been working for a year to get this up. It has strong bipartisan support. We tried to get it up before we broke in October, but there were objections on the Republican side, and we were not able to move forward even though we had been working--Senator Enzi and I--on this along with Senators Gregg and Burr on the Republican side, and Senator Durbin, I, and others on the Democratic side to work it out. I believe we are there. This bill has strong support from the consumer groups, from the business and industry groups, and it has strong bipartisan support. I hope we will be able to get a successful vote on the motion to proceed to that bill. I will have more to say about that later in the week, on Wednesday specifically. Today I wish to confine my remarks to the other two cloture votes, the Energy bill and the one on the Paycheck Fairness Act.…”