Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Senator from California was on the Senate floor this morning, Mrs. Boxer, advocating passage of this bill and urging colleagues to vote against the Snowe amendment. I am here to support that position. I would like to respond briefly to Senator Coburn's last couple of statements about where the bureaucracy failed. He didn't have to remind me, of course, the bureaucracy failed to respond to Katrina and Rita, the largest disasters by far in the history of the country. But we have spent 6 years fixing that bureaucracy, not printing bumper stickers for reelection campaigns. You know what. It has worked because our efforts to fix the bureaucracy have helped the people of Missouri and Arkansas and Tennessee and Montana and Indiana who are currently experiencing terrible disasters as we speak. The bureaucracy that showed up at the Superdome is a lot better today in many ways--it is better today than the bureaucracy that showed up at the Superdome. That is because we had hundreds of hours of committee meetings, where this hard work is done, to bring significant and important bills and changes that take debate, not on the Senate floor but take debate in the work of the committee. When you are working on major pieces of legislation that have major impacts, that is where it is done. Besides the FREEDOM Act that is on the floor today, there is the Regulatory Responsibility For Our Economy Act, sponsored by Senator Roberts with 46 cosponsors.…”