Political Quotes

“today, the Senate has done something unprecedented. Our actions and the ones that will follow from the procedural steps taken here today, over the next day or so, will change the Clean Air Act, will change the Congressional Review Act, will change the rules of the Senate, and will do so by overruling the Parliamentarian and breaking the filibuster. In effect, going nuclear. The Republicans can say what they like about this, but the fact of the matter is that the Parliamentarian ruled that the Congressional Review Act does not permit what we are doing. And she did so on the basis of advice from the Government Accountability Office, which was given that role by the Senate, given that role in a bipartisan agreement years ago. So we are de facto legislating here, amending the operation of the Clean Air Act to remove a statutory waiver for the State of California, amending the Congressional Review Act, so it is no longer the narrow provision only about rules with a short timeframe that the Senator from West Virginia described. That may have been what the Congressional Review Act was like until today, but after today, none of that is true any longer because of this action. It did not have to come to this. It did not have to come to this.”