Political Quotes

“A filibuster is a way to stop the Senate from acting. A filibuster is an effort to make sure the Senate does nothing. You saw the movie with Jimmy Stewart, ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' He took to the floor as a freshman Senator and stood there speaking in a filibuster until he collapsed in physical exhaustion. Well, it does not quite happen that way anymore. What happens, of course, is someone says: I am going to stop the Senate, and you are going to have to come up with 60 votes to stop me. Well, Democrats have 51 votes in this current Senate; the Republicans have 49. So anytime we want to move forward with a piece of legislation to which a Republican Senator objects, we need their help to stop a filibuster. They know that. So their strategy this year has been to slow us down to a crawl so nothing happens and to make sure when something comes up that they think might be a delicate vote for them to face, they start a filibuster. Then we cannot come up with 60 votes, and we move on to something else. The net result of this filibuster strategy from the Republican side of the aisle is that critically important issues, such as the ones mentioned by the majority leader, cannot be addressed in the Senate.”