Political Quotes

“I would like to respond to the statements made by the Senator from Arkansas in terms of the pending business before the Senate. We are close to reaching agreement to bring the underlying bill--the criminal justice reform bill--for a vote this evening. It is a bill that has been literally years in the making. I believe we have discussed it at great length, and we are prepared to make a decision in the Senate. There will be three amendments offered by the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Cotton. After those amendments are offered, then we will launch into another consideration of a change to the bill which has been characterized as a Cruz-Lankford amendment. For the record, we reached an agreement with Senator Cruz about this amendment. We reached an agreement with Senator Lankford about his amendment on a bipartisan basis, and I included a provision in there which required annual reports on the success of this program, so we can measure it carefully and see if it is working as we hoped it would. There were three pieces to this for Senator Cruz, for Senator Lankford, and a piece I offered for this annual report. We accepted that language which will be considered in the Senate. I certainly hope that when the request is made to include that language, the annual report will be included in it so we can move forward very quickly on the three Cotton amendments, as he suggested this evening. We can agree on the Cruz, Lankford, and Durbin amendment.…”