Political Quotes

“this has been a long process and a difficult one for me to go through. Being the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, I have had constant contact with both the Democrats and Republicans on this bill. I consider this bill to be the most important bill of the year, and I have said that several times. I have given several speeches up here in the last week. I had about decided with the last offer that was made by our side, which was to come up with 50 amendments, limit it to 50 amendments, the argument there is that would not be 50 votes. If you look at it historically-- and I have the numbers going all the way back for the last 15 years-- for last year, for example, we had 106 amendments, and only 34 were voice-voted and only 8 were recorded votes. So when we say 50, we are only talking about probably 20. Now, of course, the Democrats would only have 50 also. So what I have decided I am going to do--because I have to decide what I am going to do with my vote--I am either going to vote for or against cloture on my own bill. That would be very awkward for me to have to determine. But I have tried to get ahold of Senator Pat Toomey, who is kind of the lead person on the steering committee and the one where most of the amendments would come from, most of the objections have come from. I have said: If you will pare that down from 50 to 25, then I am sure it would be reasonable for the Democrats to have 25. That is a total of 50.…”