Political Quotes

“it is hard for me to comprehend how my Republican colleagues with a straight face can talk about ``Let's have an up-or-down vote on this.'' We agreed to allow Republicans to have an up-or-down vote. I asked consent on this floor on two separate occasions, and I make the same request now. We are willing to have a 60-vote threshold. That is an agreement we made, and we are happy to do it. But for my friends now to say ``We want an up- or-down vote,'' up-or-down votes on the magical number of 60 is what they created. We didn't draft this legislation. It was brought through committee to this floor. They thought they had--they, the Republicans, thought everything was fine until they realized they didn't have enough votes and suddenly they changed direction dramatically. Fifty votes wasn't good enough for trying to raise the minimum wage. Certainly a simple majority wasn't enough to do anything about the overwhelming debt that faces the American people. It is not credit cards, it is student debt. No, we couldn't debate that; we had to have 60 votes. Equal pay for men and women? No, we are not going to allow that to happen; what we want is to have 60 votes. That is the reason we had to file cloture more than 600 times, because the rule had been established by my Republican friend, the Republican leader, during the entire Obama administration that that is the rule.…”