Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator for her tremendous courtesy, and I will actually take 1 minute. This afternoon we are going to have a very sober and dignified debate about a foreign policy issue of huge consequence to our Nation and certainly to the world. I wish to thank Senator McConnell and Senator Reid for setting up a format that reflects that. I know many of my friends on the other side of the aisle have been concerned about amendments that may call for this to be a different type of debate. I would like to point out that the leader yesterday filled the tree. I just want people to know that. I wish to thank Senator Cardin and Senator Menendez before him for the way we have all been able to work through a lot of issues that have come up. What I hope doesn't happen today is that, somehow or another, we begin referring back to incidents and trying to turn this into some type of partisan debate. We worked through August. Things happened all along the way. We worked through those. We ended up with the ability as a Congress, on an executive agreement, which we all know was meant to be implemented without any congressional involvement whatsoever, going straight to the U.N. Security Council--we all worked together to figure out a way to have this debate and then vote on the substance of this legislation. So I want to thank my friends on both sides of the aisle. It passed overwhelmingly--98 to 1. I think, actually, the Senator from California was absent on that day.…”