Political Quotes

“reserving the right to object. Our respective cloakrooms have been working for the better part of this week to get a list of amendments that could get votes. As everyone knows, we have had, on our side, more than 60 amendments filed. So I want to hold my friend to an often-expressed promise that we would have a robust amendment process. Now, I know we aren't going to get 60 amendments--I got that--but there have been objections from Republicans to a number of amendments my Senators want to offer. They want to do a few votes on a number of their amendments. First of all, everyone should understand we are not holding up this bill. The leader has indicated he is going to file cloture today or tomorrow, so I got that. We are not going to oppose cloture, but we are not going to have the other side determine what amendments should be offered. We should be able to pick what amendments we want to offer. And I don't think it is appropriate--for example, one of the amendments he chose is from a Senator running for reelection. Is there some purpose to that? I think we should have a process where we have alternating amendments, and we pick our amendments. So I would ask my colleague to agree to changing his unanimous consent request so that it would be in order to call up the amendments I mention now. There would be an hour of debate on each amendment.…”