Political Quotes

“The Senator is absolutely right. I think when those rules were promulgated, the view was they would be done routinely and that there would never be a challenge to the action taken. The action is going to conference, appointing conferees, and instructing the conference. The Senator is absolutely right, they are all the same. It is getting us into conference where the House and Senate Members can be together, resolve their differences, and report a common bill back to both bodies. That is the whole purpose of a conference committee. I think it is particularly important today that when we have the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats, we should use regular order. We should meet with our Republican- controlled delegations with the Senate and try to resolve our differences in an open and transparent way that the rules apply. Under the current rules, since each one of those is a separate action--as Senator Udall pointed out--we can object to it being routinely approved. At that point, under the current rules, we can force--this is all precloture--a cloture motion being filed on each one of those three separate actions. I already went over how much time it takes for a cloture motion to ripen. Let's assume we can get over that hurdle--which we cannot--each one of those cloture votes, even though they may be 99 to 1, will have 30 hours of postcloture.…”