Political Quotes

“my friend, the distinguished majority leader, noted this morning that we have been in session for over 6 months. That is certainly true. My colleague from Tennessee is correct, we have made progress over these last 6 months. But it is important to the American people that the other side of the story, as Paul Harvey says, is also told. What is that other side of the story? He cited progress we have made but made no mention of the wasted time in this Senate on the so-called judicial option, the nuclear option. The time we wasted there was multiple weeks. I don't know if anyone has kept an accounting of the exact time, but the rough calculation I have made is more than one-third of the time we have been in session--about 89 days--we have devoted all or most of 30 days to that issue. More than one-third of the time we have spent in the Senate was spent on the so-called nuclear option. What did that involve? First of all, we approved, prior to starting, 208 of the President's nominees and turned down 10. The President, as soon as he was reelected, renominated 7 of the 10 we turned down. Three of the individuals decided they did not want to be judges or they did not want to go through the process. One of the judges retired who the President recess appointed. We spent more than one-third of the Senate's time on seven judges. From the very beginning of the President's reelection, we said with two of them, there is no problem, the two Michigan judges.…”