Political Quotes

“Mr. President, at the beginning of this Congress, we entered into an agreement with the minority. One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure there was a process for allowing amendments to bills. We have had the small business jobs bill on the calendar for weeks. I believe this is the fifth week this bill has been around. We have had votes on a lot of amendments. But each time we think we can see the way to closure, my friends on the other side of the aisle come forward with other amendments, making it impossible for us to move forward on this bill that creates jobs. It is a jobs bill. I do not know how much more good faith we can show than what we have shown. Before the recess, we had, I think, nine amendments. We said: OK, let's vote on these. Senator Snowe from Maine objected because she wanted to have a vote on a bill on which the chairman of the Small Business Committee said there had not even been a hearing. We spent days working on an agreement to have votes on amendments to the small business bill to get us closer to passage. Included in this agreement was a Cornyn amendment having absolutely nothing--no relevance--nothing being germane to this bill. We had one from Senator Hutchison--same thing--dealing with health care. It has nothing to do with this legislation that is before the Senate. We had all kinds of amendments. Very few had anything to do with the subject matter of the legislation.…”