Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise, together with the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to talk about the chairman's plan to conclude the deliberations of the legislation before us today. As you well know from being in the committee, this was a process that was bipartisan, thoughtful, extremely well-orchestrated by the chairman, and we accomplished a great deal. As you know, the members of the committee--we considered literally hundreds of different amendments by the members as we marked up the legislation. Then we passed the bill out of committee, we brought it to the floor, and at that point, a total of 880 amendments were filed on the legislation--446 Republican amendments, 422 Democratic amendments, and 12 joint amendments. So we had a rich field to pick from in terms of trying to improve the legislation. The first substitute that was introduced on the floor to begin formal deliberation included a total of 79 amendments--34 Republican amendments, 34 Democratic amendments, and 11 joint amendments. Then we proceeded forward. Last week we came up with another unanimous consent to allow the votes that took place this week on several very important amendments, but in addition to that, we incorporated another legislative proposal including 62 amendments. So from the introduction of the bill to the floor and to this moment, we have adopted 141 amendments. They are bipartisan, both Democrats and Republicans.…”