Political Quotes

“Senator Leahy, to whom I spoke several times today, has indicated to me that the paperwork on the vast majority of the confirmations the President is seeking has not been completed. I also would say, in response to my friend from Kentucky, regarding the chart, ``Judicial Nominations Per Hearing,'' the fact is, of course, the number of judges per hearing has some merit. But also it is acknowledged that Senator Leahy has held more hearings. So even though you do not do as many judges per hearing, if you do more hearings, it all adds up to the same thing anyway. As I have said here on several different occasions, you can prove anything with statistics or disprove anything with statistics. The fact is, we are ready to move forward on appropriations bills--``bills'' in the plural. Senator Murkowski comes to the Chamber every day saying, let's do something on an energy package. We can't. We can't until we finish the business at hand. The continuing resolution is going to run out in a few days. Then we will need a third continuing resolution. It is 3 weeks until Thanksgiving. I hope the Senator from Alaska understands that there will be no energy bill, nor can there be, until we finish the work that we have. And the work now before us is the Foreign Operations Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for 2002.”