Political Quotes

“I take this time as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to bring to the attention of my colleagues the number of nominees in important foreign policy areas that have been acted on by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but have not been acted on by the floor of the Senate. There are currently 15 nominees that have been recommended favorably by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and in most of these cases, they were unanimous votes in the Committee. I am confident to say that in each of these cases there has been no question raised as to the qualifications of the individuals to fill these particular positions. We are talking about senior members of the State Department diplomatic team. We are talking about Ambassadors in countries around the world. We are talking about people who have extremely important positions with regard to our national security. These positions are critically important to our country, and they have remained vacant in some cases for over a year. It has been a long period of time that we have not acted on these nominations. The reason we have not acted on these nominations, quite frankly, is because there is a Member in the Senate, or more than one Member of the Senate, who has put what is known as a hold on these nominations. What that means is that a Senator has indicated that he or she is going to object to the consideration of the nomination on the floor.…”