Political Quotes

“I, of course, am very disappointed my Republican colleague has chosen to object to this request on moving forward on the 9/11 Commission recommendations bill. The minority stated yesterday that they had a problem with the bill. We agreed to take that out of the bill. I don't know how much more we can do. It appears to me there are forces within the Republican Senate that simply don't want this bill enacted. This is really too bad. As my friend--and we have worked together on this Senate floor, my friend, the junior Senator from Mississippi, we have worked on this floor together for many years. When he was the majority leader, we worked together in detail on so many different issues, so this is not directed toward him. But I do say that there have been procedural roadblocks thrown up in front of virtually everything we have tried to do in the Senate this year. I was hoping we could reconsider this obstructionism when it comes to moving legislation that would make America more secure. Every day we wait on this is another day for the terrorists. For example, I talked about cargo screening. Other countries do it, but we don't. These phantom issues which are blocking this bill do not exist. This is a bill which the managers, Senator Lieberman and others, have worked out. We could go to conference and do this bill in one-half hour, an hour. And this is a real conference where conferees would sit down, there would be open debate, public debate, there is nothing to jam this through.”