Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am going to have more lengthy comments to make on this topic a little later, but I did want first of all to thank the Senator from Illinois for his comments, and I certainly want to thank Senator Cardin--and I will do so more fully in just a moment. But I would like to remind the body that, yes, we went through several steps along the way to get to where we are today that certainly created consternation on both sides of the aisle. There were lots of things that occurred. A letter was referred to. There was an address to the joint Congress. There have been numbers of things along the way that have caused people to concern themselves that maybe this debate would end up being something that was partisan and of low level. What we have done is that we have actually marshaled ourselves through that, and we ended up with the Iran review act in short terms. That gives us the opportunity, as the distinguished Senator mentioned, to actually review this. We have done that. We have had 12 hearings on this topic--extensive hearings--in the Foreign Relations Committee, and many other committees have done the same. What we ended up putting in place, with 98 votes in the Senate--98 to 1; we had one Senator who was absent--is a process where all Senators could review this, could have the documents at their disposal to go through it, to go to classified briefings so they could understand--and should understand--fully what this agreement says and then have the right to vote.…”