Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Senator from Utah makes a very good point and also asks some very good questions. In saying that we tend to work against headlines here, I often say we lurch from deadline to deadline, and the American people wonder what the heck we are doing in between the deadlines. The PATRIOT Act has been due to expire for 3 years. It is on a sunset of 3 years. We knew 3 years ago that this debate was coming. There should be plenty of time and, I think, adequate time to discuss issues that affect the Bill of Rights, that affect rights that were encoded into our Constitution from the very beginning. So I think without question the issue is of great importance and then we should debate it. But too often budgetary measures--or maybe this measure--get so crowded up against deadlines that people are like: Oh, we don't have time for amendments. The problem is, if you don't have amendments, you are not really having debate. I think the Senator characterized very well that we both agree the bulk collection of data is wrong. We think that goes against the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. However, at least half of us that we would encounter in this body don't even agree with that supposition. They believe, as many of them have pointed out, we are not collecting enough, and they don't care how we collect it, let's just collect more. So we are on different sides of opinion, two groups here.…”