Political Quotes

“let me make a couple of comments here. Oddly enough, I agree with everything the Senator from Arizona said, and the Senator from Texas. It is true. The process was terrible. I have been here--well, I guess between the House committee and this committee--for 22 years, and I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. But the effort was there to have a bill early on. I know, in working very closely with the chairman--and I have never had an opportunity to work that closely with someone in developing a bill, but we did--that it was his desire to have a bill, and it is still his desire to have a bill. The problem is we went through the option that everyone finds so offensive, and I find so offensive, and it has changed the Senate. The evidence of that is what happened in this bill. We had people who wanted to have amendments. So what I did, I went on a Thursday--I recall that--to a Republican lunch, and I went there with 25 amendments and I said: Would you all agree to cut your amendment requests, which were over 100, down to 25? If I can take that and show it to the other side, I will see if that is acceptable. They agreed to that. I want to repeat that. The Republicans agreed to actually 25 amendments. So I went to the other side and I could not get an agreement on the other side. So that effort was there. As far as the amendments are concerned, the chairman has said several times that we considered these amendments. We did.…”