Political Quotes

“so let me inform the Members and the public as to what has happened here, which is just a sad, tragic, and almost absurd point. Now, last week, we in the majority offered to have an open process, and we agreed to 18 amendments--more amendments than has been done on the Defense Act under 4 years of Leader McConnell's leadership. They objected--seven Members objected. So when we came back this week, we worked all week to try and come to an agreement. Now we were up to 25 amendments. And the leader, Mr. Inhofe, and Senator Reed, who has done a great job, came to an agreement to go forward, which we thought we might do. But one Senator, the Senator from Florida, stood in the way of us moving forward. The Senate rules--some may call them absurd by now--allow any one Senator to block us from moving forward. And the Senator from Florida insisted on his amendment. The irony, the sort of absurdity, and the sadness of this is, if his amendment were on the bill, it would automatically kill the bill because it would be what is called blue slipped in the House, which means any bill that produces revenue must start in the House, and the House will kill a bill that has an amendment that contains it. So Senator Rubio prevented these 30 amendments from being voted on, the Senate from moving forward on the Armed Services bill, because he insisted that we add his amendment, which was a killer amendment, which would kill the bill altogether. Can you get more absurd than this?…”