Political Quotes

“as we bring the session to a close, I want to spend a moment speaking about how far we have come this year. Our leader, who was speaking about accomplishments, is someone whom we should all be thanking for his leadership in bringing us to a point where we have been making changes that affect middle-class families all across America in a very positive way. There is a lot more to do. We are anxious, frustrated, pushing hard, because there is a lot more to do. But we have made a great start. We have made a downpayment on the change families are asking us to make. It has not been easy because we have seen an effort of continually trying to block change, of filibusters which are a way to drag things out, slow things down, stop things from happening. It is quite extraordinary. In the past, the highest number of filibusters was 61 over a 2-year period. Our Republican colleagues actually beat that in 1 year, 62 different times running the clock out, slowing things down. It was extraordinary to me as a member of the Agriculture Committee--and the distinguished Senator in the chair is also a committee member as well-- to see almost 3 weeks of filibustering on the farm bill, an effort to address food security and energy security and move us forward on farm policy. Fortunately, we were able to get beyond that.”