Political Quotes

“first I thank my friend from Texas. He and I share the same goal, and that is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon State. There are three basic problems with my friend's amendment, if it were to be adopted. One, it would either defeat the bill--which is very possible, because it changes the fundamentals of this bill. We are looking at reviewing an agreement that does not require consent, because Congress may, in fact, decide it does not want to take up this issue. That is one of the options. Second, if it were adopted, it could very well affect our ability to negotiate with Iran. They may say: Gee, we have to negotiate with the President, and then we have to negotiate with the Congress. And our negotiating partners, who don't have those circumstances, might very well say: That is the end of negotiations. Then the United States is blamed, and we are isolated as the country that prevented a diplomatic solution to this very difficult problem. Or, third, it puts our negotiators in a tough position because they don't have a united position. Therefore, we won't negotiate, and we won't have the strength to negotiate the strongest possible deal. And for my friend who says it is just simple for Congress to pass a bill in order to implement this, we have been on this bill for 2 weeks. It came out of the committee 19 to 0, and I don't yet see an end in sight.…”