Political Quotes

“I must say the relevance of where either the gentleman or I went to law school, my friend talked about red herrings, that seems to me totally trivial. The fact is this: There is a very clear distinction between a Constitutional Convention and the rules for amending the fundamental rules and the day-to-day decisions, and no, I do not think decisions about whether or not we should have a Medicare program. And I want to be clear, the Medicare program would have been made impossible by this. This is a kind of imposition on the people they do not like. They try to whittle it down, now they would apparently wish they never had it. But the fact is that a decision about whether or not there were Medicare programs, a decision about whether or not to raise taxes on cigarettes, is not the same as the fundamental decision about the structure of government. And, yes, I think it ought to take two-thirds to decide if we are going to change the Bill of Rights, if we are going to change the basic rules by which we govern ourselves, but that is not the same as saying that the decision to raise the cigarette tax or to institute Medicare, and those are two issues which are involved, should be done only by a majority. And I think it is very clear the other side does not like a majority. The gentleman from California conceded that point. No, he does not want it to be by majority rule. They have had bad luck with the majority.”