Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am happy the Senator from Oregon is objecting. I am not going to get into how many times the Senator from Illinois and anybody else wrote the Finance Committee to work on this bill. That is frankly irrelevant, and it is not a discussion that is worth getting into. It misses the whole point. The whole point is whether this is sound legislation. The whole point, in my judgment, is we should try to find a process where we do make this sound legislation. I think I am known around here as not somebody to unnecessarily hold up legislation. I have been here it will be close to 36 years, and that is not my style. That is not who I am. It is not in my DNA. I am someone who wants to work out things fairly, work both sides fairly but not stand and filibuster, not delay for the sake of delay or to try to get leverage. That is not what I do. I think, by and large, that is not very productive. I have said many times, and I will say it again, we can improve upon this bill if we would go to the Finance Committee and work on the bill the next work period and report the bill out. I have made that commitment; that the Finance Committee will have a markup on this legislation in the next work period and report it out so we can work on a lot of problems that are in this bill. There are a lot of them. One of the problems that comes to my mind--and I haven't had time to analyze it; nobody has had time to analyze it because there is no forum for it.…”