Political Quotes

“Mr. President, we have a very important role in this Senate--to provide advice and consent on nominees. Our forefathers, who wrote the Constitution, envisioned that this power would be used rarely because a President, knowing this power existed, would nominate highly suitable people for the post that they were intended to occupy. But we haven't seen highly suitable people coming through this Chamber this year. In fact, we have seen one person after another fabulously unsuited for the office or position to which they were nominated. We saw Scott Pruitt, who took on and attacked regulations designed to create clean air across this country time after time, in a very close association with the fossil fuel industry that wanted to allow more particulates, more particulates that cause a tremendous amount of health damage in this country. We saw Betsy DeVos come through this Chamber, an individual who was nominated to be Secretary of Public Education but had never stepped inside a public school, didn't respect public schools, hadn't had children in public schools, hadn't volunteered in public schools, and wanted to decimate public schools. The best thing we could have done for public schools would have been to turn down that nomination, but this Chamber said: Boy, you know, we are going to do everything we can to damage public education. Many of us stood up against that and said: No, let's fight for someone who can make public education better, not tear it down.…”