Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I commend the chairman and ranking member for the way they are handling this bill. As we have seen on the floor today, Democrats and Republicans alike are able to offer amendments and have an honest debate on the issues, which is exactly how we ought to be operating. As the fiscal cliff approaches we should not only be working together across the aisle to address issues like we are today with the Defense authorization bill, but we should also be working to address other critical issues, including tax issues and spending issues. That is what I wanted to address. We have a lot of challenges. Instead of pulling together we seem to be pulling apart, and I am specifically referring to some of the suggestions by some in the majority that we consider a controversial and partisan rule change that would marginalize minority Members and in a way that breaks the current rules to change the rules. What I mean by that is it takes 67 votes to change a rule in the Senate. That is a rule, by the way, that dates back to 1917. The reason that is in place is because, obviously, folks wanted to force the majority and minority to work together to make those rule changes. We don't get a two-thirds vote without that. I think it is important that the basic rules are ones that are agreed on. The party in the majority tends to change a lot around here. In fact, we have shifted back and forth between Republicans and Democrats 7 times in the past 30 years.…”