Political Quotes

“Let me bring the Senator back to the very real-life problem that I wish to discuss with him based on a very clear example in history, because what the Senator has just done is what is consistently done here. If we try to focus, in a tough-minded way, on a particular problem they say, 'Oh, well, don't worry about it; somehow or other it is going to be taken care of.' Now, I want the Senator to come with me for just a moment or two and to look at some history, and I want to read from this article that appeared in the summer of 1991. Fifty years ago last Monday, on August 12, 1941, House Speaker Sam Rayburn saved the draft from legislative defeat and kept the U.S. Army intact to fight a war that was only 4 months away. The reason I am citing this story is because we are constantly told that if we have an emergency situation, we will get this waiver. The Senator from New Hampshire has just told me we are going to get a three-fifths waiver. He left the section I was focusing on that required a majority of the whole number, namely you had to actually have 218 votes in the House or actually have 51 votes in the Senate, and he has now gone to three-fifths of the whole number. So you have to have 290 votes in the House and 60 votes in the Senate in order to address the crisis. He says if we have a crisis, we obviously will address it. I am going to point to a lesson in history in which I think people would now agree we had a crisis that had to be addressed. We did address it.…”