Political Quotes

“The one thing the Republican leader said that is absolutely true is I follow the Golden Rule, and it is very clear what has happened during this Congress. We can go over all the numbers--and I think they project what has happened--about the hundreds and hundreds of times that we have been forced to file cloture on relatively meaningless things. My friend the Republican leader claims changing the rule to make the Senate more efficient is an assault on minority rights. In fact, it is a response to the abuse of the filibuster by Senate Republicans. He keeps talking about getting rid of the filibuster. I and no one on the Democratic side have proposed getting rid of the filibuster, but we have proposed making this place more efficient. We had a run at this 2 years ago. We had a so-called gentleman's agreement that the motion to proceed would be filibustered rarely. We filibustered almost every time a bill came up, so that simply didn't work. I am not proposing that we get rid of the filibuster, just that we do away with filibusters on the motion to proceed, period. To the average American, reforms are just common sense, Mr. President. Americans believe Congress is broken. Once again, the only ones who disagree are Mitch McConnell and Republicans in Congress. The American people know, Democrats and Republicans, that this place isn't working and there needs to be some changes so we can proceed to get some legislation passed.…”