Political Quotes

“I will express some anxiety about the fact we are not moving forward with legislation we need to be considering. Interestingly enough, I came from a briefing upstairs by the Secretary of Defense and the general from Central Command. It reminds Members of the things out there that we need to deal with. Members go home to their States and people talk about issues that are of interest to them--whether it is the economy, energy, budgets--and yet we find ourselves going day after day without being able to move forward to the topics that are of prime importance. Certainly, we should have the opportunity to talk about whatever people want to talk about. We should have the opportunity to discuss and debate issues, to come to conclusions on issues, but we need to come to a conclusion. It is embarrassing to see what has happened today. We had an opportunity to move toward to resolve one of the issues we had before the Senate, the lobbying issue, which needs to be resolved. I don't happen to think it is the biggest issue in the world, but we were in the process of finding ways to get to it in a bipartisan effort that collapsed because of one effort to derail what we are doing. I think we need to take a long look at ourselves. It would be good if we had a little time to lay out on a list those issues that are most important, the top-quality issues, and then really focus on those issues.…”