Political Quotes

“I will make a brief comment. Mr. President, we started out on this with the decision that we were going to try to do some legislation on this very difficult bill. This is from our perspective. We wanted to move through this an amendment at a time. I think it worked out well. We are at a point now, I think, as we have done earlier in the day, that we don't have to live by that. We have proven that we can legislate. We can always go back and do an amendment at a time if we have to. We are going to take an amendment at a time on a case-by-case basis, and we have no objection tonight--or very likely in the near future--to being able to set amendments aside and move on. I think we have been able to accomplish a great deal in this short week. This bill is not finished yet, so there is no reason to give high fives and say work well done. There is still a lot of real hard work to do. I have submitted at the request of the manager, the distinguished chairman of the committee, a list of Democratic amendments that we have hotlined--a lot of them. I have indicated to the managers that I am confident that most of them will not have to be offered. You asked for that and you have gotten that. I think that this coming week we all have to keep our heads down and push hard. There is a lot of work to do, and we have very significant amendments. I applaud and commend Senator Specter and Senator Kennedy for the way I see the Senate working. I think we have done good work.…”