Political Quotes

“I am a patient man. At least I try to be. For my friend to come here and have the audacity to talk about my breaking my word--the trouble with that statement is that the whole Senate is here to see what happened. He said something and I said something. What he said was that we are not going to have all of these filibusters on motions to proceed. For the viewing audience, we wasted so much time just trying to get on a bill. It is not that easy. You have to file something in the Senate, and then you have to wait a day to get on the bill. If they object--and they object hundreds of times--it takes 2 days to get on the bill. Then we vote, wait 30 hours, and then we are only on the bill. To get off the bill, we have to go through that process all over again, and we have done that hundreds of times. There have been more filibusters on President Obama's judicial nominations than in the entire history of the country for other Presidents. We have been a country for a long time--roughly 240 years. There have been more filibusters for President Obama in the course of 5 years than for the previous 235 years. I went to New York and had the good fortune to watch a wonderful play--``All the Way''--about LBJ. That good man--during the time he was majority leader for 6 years--had to overcome one filibuster. As the majority leader in the Senate--because of the performance we have had over here--I had to overcome over 500 filibusters. This is for the country. It is not for me.…”