Political Quotes

“Madam President, before Senator Alexander leaves, and I know we have our conferences, and I guess we are going to go to about 1:00 today, I would like to thank him for all of his efforts. I really look forward to Senator Alexander being the ranking member--I believe he is going to be the ranking member--on the Rules Committee now that Bob Bennett has moved on to other things. He has participated in many of these hearings. I look forward to continuing the exchange on rules that we have had. I do not think this is the end of the rules debate. I think that is why we have a full-time Rules Committee to take a look at this. I hope these new Senators who are listening to us today--whom you are going to talk to on your side, I am sure, in about 15 minutes--that they look at our rules and offer suggestions and that we still continue this discussion in the Rules Committee. I thank all of the leaders who came down here today and talked. Senator Reid and Senator McConnell have announced an agreement. We are moving forward with reforms. Senator Schumer has been a real champion on rules reform. I remember going to him and asking for hearings, and he said: Well, what kinds of hearings are we looking at? What do we want to do? And I explained to him, went through--we need to talk about the history of the filibuster. You know, the filibuster was not in the original Senate. There were rules for 17 years where you had what was called a motion to order the previous question.…”