Political Quotes

“I wish to begin by thanking the vast majority of this body for the fact that over--for four times since 2010, Members of this body almost unanimously passed sanctions that brought Iran to the table--people on both sides of the aisle. I want to thank people for that. I want to thank this body for another reason. When we realized that the President was going to negotiate with Iran and do so through what was called a nonbinding political commitment and that he was going to take this agreement directly to the U.N. Security Council--he was not going to cause it to be a treaty, but he was going to cause it to be an agreement that he could execute without our involvement--because of the fact that we brought Iran to the table through the sanctions that we collectively put in place, we rose up and we passed a bill on a 98-to-1 basis that allowed us to go through this process we are going through today. I want to thank Senator Cardin, who has been an outstanding ranking member. I want to thank Senator Menendez before him, who was an outstanding chairman and ranking member. What this agreement said we would do is we would debate. I want to stop there and say that I think we have had a dignified debate. People on both sides of the aisle have handled themselves as Senators, and I am very proud of that. The other piece of that was that we would vote, that we would let the people of this country know where we stood.…”