Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today the Senate will vote for the fourth time on a procedural vote to take up the House Homeland Security funding bill. We are going to be voting on the cloture of the motion to proceed because it is a parliamentary way of dealing with the funding for the Homeland Security Department, which runs out on Friday. The Presiding Officer is the ranking member on the homeland subcommittee. The Presiding Officer did a fantastic job, working with Senator Landrieu, creating a funding framework that had bipartisan and bicameral support. I congratulate the Presiding Officer and the way the committee worked. We should be voting on the final passage for a clean Homeland Security bill. The bill--when we say ``clean,'' this is Washington speak. People do not know what a clean bill is. Is there a dirty bill? Is there a dusty bill? Is there a muddy bill? No. What we are talking about is meaning no riders on the bill. In this case, no poison pill riders. There was no disagreement, finally, because of the excellent bipartisan work on the funding of the bill, but the Senate is locked in a game of parliamentary ping-pong on moving this legislation forward, where the losers are the American people. Look at what is going on in our country right now. We are absolutely relying on Homeland Security for some of the biggest challenges--not facing in the abstract but facing us right now. There are the terrorists and there is cold weather and there are other issues.…”