Political Quotes

“let me first repeat, as I have many times, I have never worked with a manager more closely than the chairman of the Armed Services Committee Senator Levin. We worked very hard through a lot of issues. On the few where we disagreed with each other, we have handled it in a very civil way. We both want a bill and we will have one. The problem we have on the Republican side is we have not had a chance to have amendments. I don't have the charts in here, but earlier this morning I had charts here to show historically every time this comes up, we have a number of amendments that the minority has--whether the minority happens to be the Democrats or Republicans. All we want to do is to consider these amendments. Yesterday I said I don't think we will be able to do it, but I am going to attempt to come today--or yesterday, I said tomorrow--with 25 amendments that all of the Republicans have said they would not object to and we would say these are the ones we would like to have considered. Of those, assuming the Democrats had 25 also, the most we would have up for consideration would be maybe 20, probably less than that, because historically that is the way it is. I have given the majority the 25 amendments we would like to have considered, and I made the statement yesterday--and I want to repeat it today--that now that we have agreed on a list, if we can have these amendments considered on the floor, then I would be a very strong supporter of this bill.…”