Political Quotes

“this urge to measure legislation by sheer volume of bills passed has really now come up against reality. This 10-hour limitation was perfectly sensible for some of the bills we have been doing this week. They were single issue bills. We did 10 hours on prisons, 10 hours on the prevention police. We bump up against it a little bit, but they are reasonable. This 10-hour model now is applying to an omnibus bill that takes in vast areas of national security, of foreign policy, and of defense. Remember out of the 10 hours comes rollcalls. If you have four or five rollcalls, you have eaten up a couple of hours by the amount of time they will take. We will debate what our relationship should be with NATO, what new nations will come into NATO, do we go back to star wars, what is our relationship to peacekeeping, what are our requirements when the United States participates in multinational peacekeeping, all in 10 hours. By the way, the hard working majority plans to leave town at 3 o'clock on Thursday. This is 10 hours compressing the most important issues this Nation faces, so we can get out of town early. Well, let us wait until next week, if the vacation is irresistible. Frankly, for those who are prepared simply to take marching and voting orders, 10 hours may be OK. If you have checked your independent thought processes at the door and are ready to walk in here and be told what to do, I suppose 10 minutes would probably do it, if you can check them off like that.”