Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I come to the floor to call for a vote against the motion to proceed to H.R. 240, the House Homeland Security funding bill. Now, this is a shock--for Senator Barbara Mikulski to call for a vote against a motion to proceed on an appropriations bill. For the past 2 years, I have been on the floor speaking out, pounding the table, saying: Let's bring up bills; let's bring them up one at a time. So now why am I on the floor asking for a vote against the motion to proceed on the Department of Homeland Security funding bill? Well, I can tell us it is because the Homeland Security bill has two parts. One is an essential bill, the funding for the Department of Homeland Security--which I hope we get to and we get to as expeditiously as possible. But they have another component to it-- poison pill riders--five riders from the House of Representatives designed to attack the President on immigration. These riders, if passed, will guarantee the President will veto the bill, and we are going to be back to parliamentary ping-pong. We posture and pomp and vote. Send it to the President; he will veto it. We will get into more posturing, pomp, and partisan points. For what? We need to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, we do need to deal with immigration, but the Senate passed an immigration bill. Rather than attacking the President, let's attack the problems from immigration. Let's deal with the DREAMers. Let's deal with getting people into the sunshine.…”