Political Quotes

“I wish to take a few moments to talk about what is currently happening in the Senate, in my judgement, representing a State with now the second highest unemployment rate in the country--Michigan. We are glad not to be No. 1, but we sure would like to be No. 50. We have an awful lot of people right now who are waiting for us to complete action on extending unemployment insurance benefits. I continue to be appalled at the lengths to which the Republican minority will go to stop people who are out of work from getting some help. We are in a situation where we finally, after eight different votes and weeks and weeks of trying, had enough votes to overcome a filibuster. As we all know, that takes 60 votes. I am very grateful to our Republican colleagues from Maine for joining with us to make that happen. We had a vote yesterday that was a supermajority vote. We know extending unemployment benefits is going to pass because we had 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and the vote on the actual bill only takes 51. We know we have the votes, but under the procedures of the Senate, technically, unless there is a bipartisan agreement, we have to wait 30 hours before we can actually vote.”