Political Quotes

“But it was not widely known on this side. The majority leader had offered amendments on this bill. The question I ask is this--and I will make a statement and lead up to a question. You are frustrated because you feel the tree is filled all the time and you cannot make amendments. But we are frustrated because the 60-vote rule--which has always been used here--is now used routinely, which never has been done before. Judges--district court judges--I have been here in the Senate 13 years, and I was in the House 18 years and followed the Senate and cared about judges. It never happened before. Routine appointees--assistant secretaries of this, deputy secretaries of that--60 votes. And on bill after bill after bill, the procedure of this place works that somebody has to object. That is why you file cloture; otherwise, we could proceed. In the past, the motion to proceed was not routinely blocked. And almost every single bill--important bills, obviously--and nobody thinks the health care bill should have passed by 51 votes. But on minor bills--we had a filibuster on technical corrections to the Transportation bill, where 287 was written down by mistake instead of 387. It was filibustered--60 votes. So our defense is to fill the tree. But what we ought to try to do here--and, as I said, the Senator from Tennessee and I futilely tried earlier this year to maybe calm things down--is to maybe use this flashpoint to try to come together and work that out again.…”