Political Quotes

“through the Chair to my friend from Tennessee and others who wish to listen, we moved to this legislation, the China currency, with a heavy vote. We had 79 Senators who wished to proceed to that. Once we were on the bill, I partially filled the tree. Why did I do that? I have found over the last Congress and 9 months that when I try to have an open amendment process, it is a road to nowhere. It just has not worked. We have not been able to effectuate a single bill being passed that way. Regardless of whether that is right or wrong, that is what I did. Senator McConnell wanted to offer an amendment on the President's jobs bill. That, in effect, tied us down because he was unwilling to let us move to any other amendments. I was willing to move to other amendments. Specifically, everyone who was involved in this process thought that Senator Hatch was entitled to an amendment because his was clearly germane and relevant. But without going into ``he said, he said,'' the fact is no amendments were offered, even though I was happy to have some amendments offered. Now, what has happened over the last 9 months is that--and even this went on last year, where we learned about this--when cloture was invoked, Senators--it was led by Senator DeMint, and then Senator Coburn picked up on this quickly--as soon as cloture was invoked, motions to suspend the rules were filed. Now, as I have said today, that was done in this instance.…”