Political Quotes

“This is going to be a very busy week. There are over 600 amendments made in order to the defense bill. Clearly, if we do what we just did, and we do it too often--take three times the time allotted to vote; this took about 47 minutes, 48 minutes to vote in the first vote--we will be here for a very long time. No one wants to shirk their duties, but they do want to do their duties on time. I want to make it clear to the House that I have asked the leadership, the Speaker's Office, to join with me in ensuring that 5- minute votes are 5-minute votes. My colleagues, invariably, that announcement brings cheers, and invariably, those cheers come after 10, 15, 20 minutes have elapsed on a 5-minute vote--not all of us, but some of us, and many of us sometimes. In consideration of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, some of you are going to be angry because you are going to miss a 5-minute vote. Now, for those of you who are casting proxies, I ask you to cast them immediately upon the vote opening so that we can process the proxies at the desk. Yelling at one another doesn't help trying to bring some self-respect to this institution. Each of us has to take personal responsibility to do our job, which is to put our card in the voting machine, to put our proxies in, to move along. I ask all of us to respect that because I am going to try, to the extent humanly possible, to end votes at 5 minutes. Some of you are going to be upset.…”