Political Quotes

“Democrats believe there are a lot of bad people out there and that there should be some form of collecting information over the telephone. But we believe it should be done in an orderly way in keeping with our Constitution. It appears, based on Republican actions yesterday, they want no controls whatsoever on the President. They want exactly what he has been doing now, which is violating the law. Mr. President, we have offered a 2-week extension of the bill, a 30-day extension, a 15-month extension. If this bill that we have now before us is not enacted, it is not because of Democrats, it is because the Republicans, in conjunction with Vice President Cheney and the President, have made some determination that there should be no FISA legislation. I, frankly, do not think that cloture will be invoked Monday afternoon. That being the case, it is virtually legislatively impossible to do anything by February 1. Remember, the House is out of session all but 1 day next week. So the record should be very clear, we believe there are very bad people out there. We believe there should be some way of collecting information. But we believe, as does the vast majority of the American people, it should be collected in some way that is within the bounds of our Constitution.”