Political Quotes

“We are going to have a little exchange here in a minute about what the last week has been like. There have been some statements that Republicans have not been here offering amendments, that somehow we have sort of been letting time pass at the expense of a meaningful debate on the START treaty. I think we can catalog at least what three of us have been doing in the last week, and that might be informative to the body as to why it has been tough to talk about START in a meaningful way. But to Senator Levin, who is a wonderful man, if this preamble language being taken out of the treaty is a fatal problem, then that bothers me because I do not know if any Russians are listening to this debate, but I have a simple question for your government. Your government has been saying publicly that if we deploy--the United States--four stages of missile defense, you believe that allows you-- the Russian Government--to withdraw from the treaty. We all intend to do that. Our President is saying that we are going to deploy four stages of missile defense to defend this Nation against missile attacks from North Korea, Iran, anywhere else it may come from. If you do not agree with that, let us know now because it is not going to help you or us to sign a treaty and it fall apart later. So at the end of the day, this is a simple question that needs to be answered in a direct, simple way.…”