Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to address the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. I will start by noting that just moments ago the majority leader was on the floor and did something that has never before been done in U.S. history; that is, on the first day--indeed, in the first hours of debate on a Supreme Court Justice on this floor, the majority leader filed a petition, called a cloture petition, to close debate. So here we are on the first day, just hours into the debate, and the majority leader has said: Enough. We do not want to hear any more about this topic. We are going to shut down debate. The rules provide some protection for this, and that is that it cannot be voted on until Thursday. So there is time between now and Thursday for us to air our views. Historically, often debates went on for a substantial amount of time--a week, some for many weeks--with no cloture petition being filed, with no closing of the debate. Certainly, never before has the majority leader shut down debate, filed that petition on day one in his trying to ram this nomination through. This is just a continuation of firsts--first events that do absolutely no credit to this institution, no credit to the Supreme Court, no credit to our Nation. In fact, they pose a substantial danger. It was February 13, a little over a year ago, that Supreme Court Justice Scalia died.…”