Political Quotes

“It has been made graphically clear to me that the Republicans wanted more votes on their amendments. One problem: They objected to bringing up their own amendments. It makes it a little tough to vote on them. It is like having a basketball tournament where you have the five players on each side, and they are going to have a tournament, and the winner is the team with the most points, but--one problem--nobody will supply a basketball. That is what we had here. The logic of the statement of my friend from Kentucky leaves me without a lot of understanding. They want more amendments. We did everything we could to have amendments today. I will go through it again. We started out with eight. They objected to it. Six, five; they objected every time. We said: Do you want more amendments pending? Here they are. We will give you six or eight. Objection. So we know where we are. But let's realize where we are and not make up the facts. The real true facts: We wanted to give the Republicans votes on amendments. Voice votes did not count. It had to be rollcall votes. And I accepted that. But we could not get any kind of votes because we could not get amendments up--not for our fault. So, Mr. President, I do not want to leave this floor tonight without stating how much I admire and appreciate seven courageous Republicans who did the right thing. They know what went on here in the last few days is wrong. They voted for cloture tonight.”