Political Quotes

“I rise today to express my opposition to the majority leader's plan to change the Senate rules. It will open the door wide for the filibuster to be eliminated for all legislation moving forward. The bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called the ``cooling saucer of democracy'' into the rubberstamp of dictatorship. They want to because they can't get their way. They want to wash away 200 years of history. They want to turn this country into a banana republic, where if you can't get your way, you change the rules. It would be a doomsday for democracy. These are strong words, and these are wise words, but they are not my words. They are direct quotes from Senator Schumer back in 2005, when he was a staunch opponent of weakening the filibuster. That is because during that time, the then-junior Senator from New York and his Democratic colleagues were making unprecedented use of the filibuster to derail President George W. Bush's judicial nominees. The majority leader at one point profoundly admitted that ``[y]es, we are blocking judges by filibuster. That is part of the hallowed process around here of the Founding Fathers saying the Senate is the cooling saucer.'' But things have certainly changed two decades later. President Biden, the majority leader, and their Democratic allies were intent on ending the filibuster the second the Democrats won the Senate last January.…”