Political Quotes

On the recordSeptember 23, 2010
again, if I truly felt this bill was going to solve those problems, I would be out here supporting it. I do not think so. We have an inherent disagreement. The Senator from Illinois can file a cloture motion any time he wants to proceed to this bill. He can file it today, and we can have a cloture vote next week--we are not going to be doing anything next week anyway--and we can go to the bill. File the cloture motion, if that is how he feels about the bill and he thinks I am dead wrong. File the cloture motion, get the votes, and do it. What we are hearing is we want it to pass in a short period of time so there cannot be the real debate there needs to be on the problems in this country on food safety. That is what we just heard. We have been talking about this issue. We could have been here tomorrow debating this bill. The fact is, they did not file a cloture motion. They filed cloture motions 179 other times this Congress, more than any other Congress in the history, and the vast majority of them less than 24 hours after the bill was introduced. If the Senator really wants to have the debate, put the bill on the floor, file cloture, and have the debate. I will debate this for 30 hours. Washington is great about saying they are fixing things. They are great about passing bills. They are not great about fixing things because they fix the symptoms, not the real disease. That is the problem with this bill. It does not drill down and fix the real disease.
Said by
Tom Coburn
Republican · Oklahoma
Source
govinfo.gov
Sep 23, 2010

Editor's note · Context

Senator Coburn discusses the need for a real debate on food safety legislation.

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