Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first of all, I want everyone within the sound of my voice to understand that I do not like the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, the Korea Free Trade Agreement, or the Panama Free Trade Agreement. I will vote against them. But I have been asked on numerous occasions to move these trade matters to the floor. That is what I have agreed to do, and I am going to do that. But it is very difficult for me to understand, when my Republican colleagues, the Chamber of Commerce, and others support these trade agreements, and they want them done, and now when I want to move to them, I cannot do it. It is hard to comprehend that we have to file cloture on a motion to proceed to an agreement we have. The agreement we have is that we are going to do trade adjustment assistance, and a few other stops in the middle, and then we are going to do the free trade agreements. Again, this is the pattern we have experienced for the last 8 months. It doesn't matter what it is. This is something they agreed with. We are attempting to move to the free trade agreements and they are stopping us from doing that. I hope the American people get the picture, and I am confident they are getting the picture more clearly every day. There isn't a thing we can bring up here that they don't stall to the very limit of the procedures here. Again, we are going to move to the free trade agreements. The first part of the deal is trade adjustment assistance. We have to invoke cloture to do this.…”