Political Quotes

“I want to comment a minute, before I talk about the individual amendments, on the process we have seen. We are going to have several amendments, and this is well in excess of $1 trillion in spending. We have had four amendments voted on, and I think unanimous consent will give us seven or eight more. So we are going to have a total of 12 amendments. All but the first one were not tabled, but we are at 60-vote margins, which is fine. But for a bill that spends $1 trillion, to choke down the Senate in a way that does not allow either side the appropriate opportunity to impact $1 trillion worth of spending doesn't fit with either the culture or the history of the Senate, and certainly doesn't fit with the agreement going forward and the rules changes we had this year. On a bill that has $1 trillion worth of spending, in past history--if you look at the 104th, the 105th, the 103rd Congress--bills of that size would have 70 or 80 amendments, and we are going to choke down to 11 or 12 amendments on this. The question is, Why would we do that? Why would we limit the discussion and the division of thought, manifested through votes, for the American people to actually see what we are doing? There are only two reasons why this is happening. One is--and from a phone call with the President, in his own words, he wants sequester to hurt. Now, think about that for a minute. And he is my friend. I challenged him on that when he said it to me.…”