Political Quotes

“Madam President, before the recess, there was an attempt to try to bring finality before this bill expired. At that time, I reached out to my friend and colleague from Kentucky, Senator Paul, and offered him my assurance, as manager of the bill, that we would take up his amendments. But as the President of the Senate knows, if any one Senator objects to a vote, then a vote does not happen. I consented at that time that I would initiate a tabling of his amendment so that there could actually be a vote. There has been every attempt to try to accommodate amendments. I think that given the short time that we are dealing with, where we are trying to make sure that the expiration of these needed tools is as limited as we can, the leader is exactly right. You cannot go outside of the processes that were already triggered prior to this. I think we have made every attempt to try to accommodate the current Senate rules, but unfortunately, there were objections to that as we departed town over a week ago, and we are where we are. For my colleagues' sake, let me restate where we are. We have had the expiration as of midnight last night of section 215. Section 215 has many pieces to it, but there are three that are highlighted. One is the ``lone wolf'' provision, an individual who has no direct tie to a terrorist organization but could be radicalized in some type of communication, and ``lone wolf'' provides us the ability to target them without a direct association to a terrorist group.…”