Political Quotes

“Madam President, this is my 10th year in the Senate. Every time we come to a close of the session for a summer break or for a holiday break all of a sudden we start hearing all these unanimous consent requests--they come to the Senate. For those of you who are listening to this and to my colleagues, these are requests that bills be passed without a vote. I am fine with that, as long as they meet certain characteristics and considerations. But what the American public does not know is that about 70 percent of the work the Senate does happens by unanimous consent, with no recorded vote on the back of any one Senator. Today is no different. I have heard of five or six requests for unanimous consent. They are fine with a couple of provisions. The first provision is they ought to be within the powers of Congress as enumerated by the Constitution in the enumerated powers. The tendency is: Oh, we have to do this; it has to happen now. For some of the things that is true, but the reason it has to happen now is because we had not done it before now because we failed to do it. We utilize the end of the session to force people to give on positions they would never give on otherwise because they do not want to take the heat for being responsible for stopping something from happening, even though it might not fit within the enumerated powers, it might not be under our constitutional authority.…”