Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first of all, let me just agree with the comments that were made by Senator Reed. He has been great to work with. I am glad he mentioned all the help of his staff. People don't realize how, on a bill this size--this is the largest bill we will consider probably this year--how much staff is involved. It is both Republican and Democratic staff. It is one of the few things we do around here that really isn't partisan. I think the Senator from Rhode Island and I were only apart from each other on maybe 10 or 11 amendments. By the way, on amendments, I do want to comment how many amendments we took care of during the committee hearing. So we have had a lot of activity on the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for 2019. Throughout the last 2 weeks, we have debated this legislation on the Senate floor in an open process. We have said over and over, we want to have open amendments, and we want to have people bring amendments down. We have a system that is probably not going to be changed, but there is going to be some activity this next year by several of us, if we are going to be involved in next year's authorization bill for the year 2020, to see if we can't address a major problem; that is, we have allowed a system to take place where 1 person can stop 99 people from having an amendment. That is wrong.…”