Political Quotes

“Madam President, before I get into my main remarks on Syria, I just heard the majority leader, Leader McConnell, say that he wants to see if we can do appropriations bills, that he will see if the Democrats want to legislate. Give me a break. Since we have started to legislate, we have been waiting for 6 months, 9 months. It is well- known in the country that the Senate is the legislative graveyard, that Leader McConnell has not put on the floor bill after bill on major issues that affect the country and that demand attention. Most everybody knows that he is proud that he is the Grim Reaper. So now, in his asking if the Democrats want to legislate, it is all up to Leader McConnell. On the appropriations bills, of course, we want to legislate when it is being done in a fair way. There are some bills that came out of the Appropriations Committee in a bipartisan way. I think there are four of them that the leader is thinking of putting on the floor, and we would like to move forward on those and have a vigorous process as we go forward. There are certain bills that were not done with any consultation--the taking of money out of things like MILCON and HHS and putting it for a wall that he knows the Democrats will not go for. Those kinds of things we can't legislate until they become bipartisan, until we work together. There are certain bills--HHS, Defense, MILCON, DHS--that we can't move forward on until we have some bipartisan agreement.…”