Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Kansas. I think he has articulated about as well as anybody the importance of passing the legislation on the floor. Many of my colleagues, I think, unlike the Senator from Kansas, in some ways fail to recognize that when we put the sanctions in place that brought them to the table, in the meanwhile they were going from 164 centrifuges back in 2003 to 19,000 centrifuges today. What Congress did in a bipartisan way was put four tranches of sanctions in place to begin putting pressure on them to stop and to get them to the table. We have done that, but in each of those cases, we gave the President unilaterally the ability to waive or suspend the sanctions ad infinitum--forever. It is something that my friend Senator Kaine from Virginia recognized in our meetings as we had the Secretary come forward and talk to us about the fact that, yes, you are going to have a vote on this. But we all recognized that was 4 to 5 to 6 years down the road after the sanctions regime had been totally alleviated. I just want to thank the Senator for being so articulate in his comments. The fact is that without this legislation--without this legislation passing--Congress will have zero. The President will go straight to the U.N. Security Council with the suspensions in his hands that we have already given them and implement whatever kind of deal he wants to implement. I have had a great conversation with my friend from Virginia today.…”