Political Quotes

“I would like to be recognized for a moment before we proceed. This is an important step in the consideration of the Endless Frontier Act. We have just locked in six votes for this afternoon--two important side by sides, Wyden and Crapo on Finance Committee matters; a Paul amendment on the National Institutes of Health funds being used in China; an Ernst amendment on the Wuhan lab; a Daines amendment on intellectual property in China; and the Lee amendment on stem cell research. This is a great step forward; that the Senate is proceeding this afternoon to regular order, and regular order allowing Senators to come forward and offer amendments that might improve the bill is helpful. It is hoped that we can do that again tomorrow and Thursday and move toward an opportunity to pass this bill. I would point out to my colleagues--and I know the distinguished chair of the Finance Committee will agree with this. We have locked in six 15-minute votes. In fairness, really, the five subsequent votes should be 10-minute votes. We can fool around and wander in here for hours and be here until 8 or we can begin at 4:45 and resume the practice that we had for years before we quit doing regular order in this body. If Members will hold each other accountable and if the Chair is willing to say after a certain amount of time, if a straggler is missing, that that Senator simply has missed votes, then we can do this in an orderly fashion.…”