Political Quotes

“on this last day of the 106th Congress I would ask to be allowed a moment of reminiscence and farewell. Come January 3--deo voluntus, as the Brothers used to teach us--I will have served four terms in the United States Senate, a near quarter century. In our long history only one other New Yorker, our beloved Jacob K. Javits, has served four terms. I had the fortune of joining the Finance Committee from the outset, and served for a period as chairman, the first New Yorker since before the Civil War. I was also, at one point, chair of Environment and Public Works. I have been on Rules and Administration for the longest while, and for a period was also on Foreign Relations. Senators will know that it would be most unusual for someone to serve on both Finance and Foreign Relations at the same time. An account of how this came about may be of interest. The elections of 1986 returned a Democratic majority to the Senate and the Democratic Steering Committee, of which I was then a member, began its biannual task of filling Democratic vacancies in the various standing committees. There are four ``Super A'' committees as we term them. In order of creation they are Foreign Relations, Finance, Armed Services and Appropriations. With the rarest exceptions, under our caucus rules a Senator may only serve on one of these four. There were three vacancies on Foreign Relations. In years past these would have been snapped up.…”