Political Quotes

“we are here today as a result of stalling by my Republican colleagues. We have a judge for whom the vote was overwhelmingly in his favor. It was 89 for him, with 4 or 5 against him on a motion to proceed. But now we are being forced to eat up 30 hours of valuable time, just sitting around and doing nothing. It is really unfortunate. We have not confirmed the judge yet because under the rules I have had to file cloture on this noncontroversial judge. After I file cloture, and cloture is invoked, and then the Republicans get 30 hours under the Senate rules. This has happened scores of times--scores of times--during the past year, all last year, and certainly it is already happening this year. We can't move to anything unless we file cloture. Early in this Congress, Senators Tom Udall of New Mexico, Merkley of Oregon, and others suggested the rules be changed, and in good faith a number of Senators believed: Well, let's see how the system works if we make a few minor changes--hoping things would get better because they were told they would get better. We were told the other side would not make us file motions to proceed to every piece of legislation that came up. Absolutely untrue. We have virtually had to file cloture on everything. We have wasted weeks of this Congress, months of this Congress, on dilatory tactics. We have a bill before this body that is so very important, creating 2 million jobs.…”