Political Quotes

“I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Wyoming and considerable affection. Indeed, he is my ranking member on the HELP Committee, and he has been kind enough to offer his perspective on this question of the rules change. I will reciprocate by offering my perspective. We were in the caucus the other day. Our leader reported that during the time Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader, which was a very active and disputatious time in the Senate, he faced one filibuster, and Leader Reid reported that he had faced 391, I think was the number he used. So clearly the use of the filibuster as measured by the number of cloture motions is completely out of control. The Senator from Wyoming correctly points out that filling the tree is a challenge to the minority, but I believe, if I recall correctly--I was planning to speak on something else, and I don't have the numbers exactly accurate at hand--I believe the number of times the tree has been filled is something like 70. So there is a huge disparity between the number of times the majority leader has filled the tree and the number of times he has been forced to file cloture. The reason is that very often there is not agreement on amendments.…”