Political Quotes

“Right, that is correct. But there was not one single hearing with respect to the specifics of the bill. I would like to turn, if I could, to this work that my colleague--and I am happy to have partnered with him--has played such an important role in; that is, the consequences of all this reckless haste and secretive process, which he and I have been working on. In my view, it is really is legislative malpractice. We have a bill that is full of mistakes that are going to have unintended consequences, opening many new loopholes for the wealthy and crafty accountants and lawyers. The Senator and I have been working to try to weed out of this legislation violations of what is called the Byrd rule, which, in English, basically means you can't stuff provisions into a bill that really don't deal with tax and spending. By my count, the Senator and I have already pushed that there are more than 20 Byrd rule violations that had to be corrected. Before I ask my question, I just want to give people a little bit of the idea of the work the Senator and I have been doing over the last few days. Late Friday night, we were able to remove a particularly offensive provision that would have turned some churches in America into partisan, political organizations. Specifically, there was an effort here to overturn what is called the Johnson amendment, named after Lyndon Johnson, that barred churches from endorsing partisan political activity with political candidates.…”