Political Quotes

“I yield to my friend, the Republican leader, to respond to any questions that the Senator from Tennessee may have. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. McCONNELL. Yes. Let me, for the benefit of our colleagues, explain what, in fact, happened. It is not complicated. It was pretty clear, whether you liked this bill or did not, it was going to pass. You could tell that by cloture on the motion to proceed with a very large majority. So I do not think my good friend the majority leader had to worry about whether his bill was ultimately going to pass. The question was whether there were going to be any amendments at any point to the bill. And my conference made a decision--actually against my best advice--to go on and invoke cloture on the bill after we had no amendments. The reason we had no amendments is because the majority leader used a device we have all become too familiar with called filling the tree, thereby allowing no amendments he does not approve. And he said that we are open for amendments, but what he means is this: We are open for any amendment I approve. So he filled the tree and, prior to cloture on the bill, controlled whether any amendments would be allowed and chose not to allow any, as a practical matter. So against my best advice, my conference decided to invoke cloture on the bill. So we were moving to approving the bill with no expression whatsoever.…”