Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the issue before us is Caitlin Halligan's nomination for the DC Circuit Court. I spoke yesterday in support of her nomination. It is unfortunate she is going to be forced to face a filibuster; in other words, that the Republicans are going to insist on a 60-vote margin for her approval. That is unfortunate because we have tried in the beginning of this Senate session to avoid this kind of filibuster confrontation. In the last several years, we have had over 400 filibusters, a recordbreaking number of filibusters in the Senate. What that means is the ordinary business of the Senate has been stopped 400 times, when those who were trying to bring up a nomination or bill or amendment faced a filibuster which required literally stretching the vote out over days and sometimes even over 1 week. That is unnecessary. It is frustrating as well. There are a lot of things we need to do and a lot of issues we need to face. I am not afraid of taking on controversial votes on the floor. I think that was part of the job assignment coming here. I quoted many times my late friend, my colleague in the House, Mike Synar of Oklahoma, who used to get right in the face of his colleagues at the Democratic caucus when they complained about controversial votes on the floor and he said: If you don't want to fight fires, don't be a firefighter. If you don't want to vote on controversial issues, don't run for Congress. That is what this job is about. I agree with that.…”