Political Quotes

“I think my colleague from New Mexico is absolutely right in pointing out there were periods when the Senate really worked to face the big issues of America. And it wasn't that there weren't profound differences. There were fierce differences, emotional differences, deep differences, but folks came to this floor, they conversed, they laid out their arguments and, ultimately, they made decisions about which way to go. They didn't bring the attitude: Well, let's paralyze this Chamber from doing anything. Had they done that, there would never have been the set of changes that addressed significant issues in either of those periods. My colleague is right that a part of the reason I feel so strongly about restoring the functioning of this Senate is that when I came here as an intern at age 19 for Senator Hatfield, I had the very good fortune to be assigned to the Tax Reform Act of 1976, and then I had the even better fortune that it came up on the floor of the Senate. So during the many days it came before the body, I sat up in the staff gallery and watched as amendment after amendment was raised and debated and voted on.…”