Political Quotes

“the Senate should function like the Senate. I acknowledge that. But we have major pieces of legislation that have been brought down as a result of not being able to have finality of that legislation, unending amendments that are not germane or relevant. The small business innovation bill that had passed in past years easily, we had the Economic Development Administration bill that passed easily in the past, job-creating bills on which we had an open amendment process--they were simply stopped. There are rules of germaneness in the Senate. There are rules of germaneness in the Senate. Let's think about these amendments that I agreed to. There are others I did not agree to, but there are amendments that I agreed we should have a vote on, not that I wanted to have a vote on them because they had nothing to do with the underlying bill--nothing. There are rules of germaneness that that should be the case. DeMint amendment, right to work; Cornyn amendment, fighter planes to Taiwan--we already had a vote on that, but we agreed to have another one; Hatch amendment--that one is relevant and it is germane; Barrasso amendment, cement--not so; Paul, Federal funding; Coburn, foreign aid; McConnell, jobs act. Part of cloture is enforcing germaneness. That is what it is all about. We are happy to do germane amendments. But the fact is, the Republican leader himself decided not to have amendments on this bill. I agreed to amendments on the bill prior to cloture.…”