Political Quotes

“what we need here in the Senate is more debate, not less debate. I certainly have no problem with the Senator from Wisconsin speaking for as long as he wishes, and if the managers of the bill wish to yield time off the resolution to him, it is fine with me. I do want to say this, however: For the majority leader--and he has the right, I don't dispute that at all--to come to the floor without notice to his counterpart and offer a unanimous consent request is something that I never tried to do. I always tried to give him the benefit of my telling him what I plan to do, and I think that is the right thing to do. I am sure there was nothing willful in what he did; I am sure it was just an oversight. To try to limit debate on this most important matter that Senator Feingold is going to put before the Senate is not appropriate. I have no problem with arranging a time to finish debate on the Feingold proposal, but it seems to me what is happening in the Senate is there is no time to debate much. And we are under a statute, and that is why we are here today with the budget resolution, with 50 hours on this. But if we look at what we have facing us in the future, in the immediate future, the Secretary of the Treasury has asked us to increase the national debt from $8.2 trillion to $9 trillion. Now, if there were ever an opportunity for the American people to hear the differences between the two parties, I think it would be on that debate.…”