Political Quotes

“Mr. President, over the past several weeks, we have seen numerous attempts by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to take a serious issue and, frankly, I think, turn it into a political football. It is an issue on which the Presiding Officer and I have spent a lot of time looking at what we need to do, in our having served on the Committee on Intelligence and, in my case, on the Committee on Rules and Administration, to be sure that people have the maximum confidence that what happens on election day is exactly reflected in the results. Our friends came to the floor last week and sought unanimous consent to make sweeping changes to the election laws of the country. Then they somehow suggested there was a conspiracy that anybody would say no to that. Unanimous consent means exactly that. It is what we do when we name a post office. It is what we do when we make decisions that are unanimously agreed to. It is usually all it takes to get that issue settled. It is not how we shape the laws that are at the heart of our democracy. It is also not what we do, in my opinion, when we try to make a point about that. In fact, one of the bills on which they sought unanimous consent had passed the House. It had received exactly one Republican vote in the House. So, clearly, it was not unanimously consented to over there and would not be unanimously consented to here. This is about press releases, not policy.…”