Political Quotes

“I say to my colleague we are just being given these kind of bland assurances. ``Surely this would happen. No question this would be done. It is common sense that we would respond.'' Yet I am giving you a real, live, historical example. There was nothing hypothetical about it, nothing conjectural about it. It happened at a critical time in American history. We were faced in the Congress with a very fateful decision. We are talking literally months before Pearl Harbor. Literally months. And the Congress was faced with this difficult decision. The Congress reacted, I think, appropriately. But by very narrow margins. And neither of the margins in the Senate nor the House are adequate to meet the requirements contained in your proposal, which only dramatizes the point that the Senator from West Virginia has made so effectively here this morning about the danger of going against the Founding Fathers, against Madison and Hamilton, and writing in these supermajority requirements. The real danger to the Republic is that you will not be able to deal with crisis situations when they emerge. The Senator says, ``Oh, no, we will take care of those. Do not worry about it. Do not worry about it. Surely we would respond.'' I am saying to the Senator: I am giving an example right out of history where we, under his standards, would not have taken care of it.…”