Political Quotes

“I thought I would bring our colleagues up to date on what is going on this evening, as it is getting late. We are close, I believe, to working out an agreement for a vote on an amendment that was offered by Senator Paul earlier. It has to do with extending to executive branch officials the same kind of reporting requirement to ban insider trading that would apply to Members of Congress and their staffs. It is an amendment that enjoys the support of both managers and the principal authors of this bill. We are trying to make sure, however, that we narrow the amendment so that it applies to top-level Federal employees and not to low-level Federal employees, who have no policy responsibilities. So we were looking at limiting it to Senate-confirmed positions. The problem with that is it brings in all of the military appointments that are Senate confirmed, so we want to make sure we exclude those individuals who are clearly not the target of the amendment. We continue to work--the managers, the sponsors of the bill, and the sponsor of the amendment, Senator Paul--in order to refine his amendment. It is still our hope that we can reach that compromise and have a rollcall vote tonight. We will keep our colleagues informed about whether it will be possible to complete the drafting that would be needed to modify his amendment. Amendment No. 1490 In the meantime, I want to talk very briefly about an amendment Senator Paul filed, his amendment No. 1490.…”