Political Quotes

“We all know the talent of the senior Senator from Alaska, a wonderful man, and it is good that he hasn't been upset with us recently. But where was my friend when we were spending all the time on gay marriage and other such things when we should have been working on this? We don't run this place; the majority runs the Senate. We do our best to represent our constituents. But we don't need to be told it is our fault the Defense appropriations bill is not going forward. We have been willing to work on the Defense appropriations bill, and I say as someone who has managed a lot of bills here on the floor, if we were attempting to stall, there are a lot of other ways of doing that. We had very short debates on these amendments. Any one of these amendments, I say to the leader, could have taken all day, but we set reasonable times for our amendments and we voted on them. I think the record is very clear that we have tried to cooperate. However, there is too much to do, and I think it is asking too much, especially when we look down the road. I talked to one of my friends on the other side of the aisle. If we don't do this pensions bill, we have two airline companies that are going to dump their pensions. Everyone knows it is Delta and Northwest Airlines. They are in bankruptcy. They are going to dump those pensions, affecting tens of thousands of people working for those two airlines.…”