Political Quotes

“we are so grateful we are now moving to the Defense bill, getting off the cloture vote. This was a good move. We appreciate that very much. Realistically, we have about 140 amendments. The majority has over 90 amendments. That is a lot of amendments. Many of the amendments, as we know, will not be offered. There are a large number of irrelevant amendments which are just a ``holder'' in case something comes up that is not anticipated. However, we still have scores of amendments that people will offer. A number of these amendments, the managers will work through and we will be able to dispose of one way or the other. However, we are not going to finish the bill Thursday. There is an important trip Members are taking to commemorate the anniversary of the Normandy invasion and a number of Senators will be leaving for that sometime Thursday evening, I understand. I further note we will not be able to work on this bill Friday. That is my understanding, at least. Certainly there will not be any votes. We want to work to finish this bill. As I mentioned earlier today, there is not anything we can be more importantly engaged in than working on this Defense bill. Yesterday, five soldiers were killed. We have averaged two deaths a day for the last 2 months. We are approaching 5,000 of our military personnel who have been injured, many of those grievously injured. We are going to be as cooperative as we can. This is a bill we want as much as the majority.”