Political Quotes

“with the deepest respect to my friend the senior Senator from Oklahoma, we are not in a position to have a bunch of amendments on this bill. It took us weeks to get the drug compounding bill done--weeks, plural. What we should do is get this very contentious amendment out of the way and move on to other amendments. There is no reason why we can't agree on going from one amendment to another amendment. Everyone has to understand that this is not going to be an open amendment process. It is not going to happen. We have tried that. Remember? People said, we haven't done anything on energy for 5 years. That pretty well says it all. But we said, OK, what we are going to do is work on something that is bipartisan in nature led by Senator Shaheen. Senator Portman was heavily involved. We never got off first base. We never even got headed toward first base. So we can't do that. There is going to have to be a change of atmosphere around here where we agree to do legislation. We talk about remembering the good old days when we had unlimited amendments. I remember those too. I also remember the good old days where the majority would have a few amendments, the minority would have a number of amendments, and we would move forward and pass legislation. But no one is willing to do that anymore. We are, but they are not. So I know how well-intentioned my friend is, but that was then and this is now. I object. I don't accept his modification to my request.…”