Political Quotes

“I wish a number of things. One of the things I wish is that we could legislate the way I remember the Senate legislating. There have been editorials written, there was a cartoon this morning in the Washington Post, about all the many filibusters led by Republicans. We came to our first appropriations bill. We have two individuals who are historic in their knowledge of the Senate, Senator Byrd and Senator Cochran. I have lamented with my friend from Mississippi on a number of occasions how we would like to follow regular order. We try to do that as much as we can. There are a number of ways to kill legislation. One is to get on the floor and talk forever. That is the old-fashioned filibuster. The other way is to do it by diversion, other ways. That is what we have before us today. We have here a bill dealing with Homeland Security. We all know border security is important, and we know the underlying bill is $2.3 billion more than the President requested, most of that money going directly to border security--3,000 new detention beds, 3,000 new Border Patrol agents. It is a good bill. But my friends who want to not have this bill have now done what would seem almost impossible: They want to relegislate immigration.”