Political Quotes

“Madam President, I say to Senator Merkley, who has been a good friend and partner on this issue of filibuster reform, I couldn't agree more with his comments and with the kinds of things he has been talking about: commonsense proposals to make the Senate work. What Senator Merkley and I have been talking about is the way we can have the Senate do the work of the American people. We just went through an election. We know our States are hurting. People want to create jobs. They want us to deal with health care costs and make sure there is quality health care. On education reform, we haven't even reauthorized the No Child Left Behind Act or dealt with education. So all of those issues are front and center. As we know, the last couple of years, because of the filibuster and because of the delay and because of the obstruction we have had go on, we haven't been able to get to those issues. And I think Senator Merkley has experienced what I have when we have talked to our friends on the Republican side--they agree it is not working. Really what we are trying to do is come up with commonsense proposals such as the Senator has talked about to make the Senate work. The first one is very simple. It is to make sure that the motion to proceed to a bill will not be debatable. We are talking about not allowing filibusters on the motion to proceed because, as we have seen on the chart here, we are in a situation where we now cannot even get on the bills. So this is a commonsense proposal.…”