Political Quotes

“I will be very brief, but I do want to say that I have been in the Senate now for a number of years, with Republican leaders and Democratic leaders, Democratic majorities and Republican majorities, and never have we had a situation like we have had this past 6 months. We have to move to cloture on virtually everything--everything. I am going to file, now, tonight, four cloture motions. Never have we had to do this before. It is common practice, and has been for all the time we have been a Senate, that, because you are dealing with the House, you are offering a substitute amendment that takes place with the Senate bill. Without going into a lot of detail, we rarely in the past had to file cloture on not only the substitute but also the underlying bill. We have to do it on virtually everything. We have never had to file cloture on every motion to proceed. That is what we are having to do now. It is a tremendous waste of the time of the Senate and of the country, but that is what we have to do. That is what I am going to do tonight. It is going to become apparent, and is to some people, and some writing is taking place on it now, that we had to file so many cloture motions. It is because we have on almost every occasion had to file cloture on everything. It is a struggle to get legislation here to the floor. The minority's goal, the Republicans' No. 1 goal, I guess, at this time is to see that we don't get anything done.”