Political Quotes

“could I ask, through the Chair to the Democratic leader, to express an opinion first, and that is we absolutely have to proceed with this pensions legislation. I know my distinguished colleague has come to the floor and said certain things about why we are not proceeding to conference, but it does come down to the fact that in November we passed this bill and the House passed it about a month later. At that point in time I said the conferees would be seven and five. As the Democratic leader knows, that is, after consultation--with consultation to the Democratic leader--the prerogative of the majority leader. I have been consistent with that. We have waited a couple of months for a response and the Democratic leader has given us a response, but the response is that it is unacceptable, we need more people--because of things going on within their caucus. I think it is time to stop--both. Everybody stop playing games and let's get to conference. It is an important issue. We had this April 15 deadline. We finished work on the floor now 3 months ago, and yet we had this bickering about the number of conferees. I know it is tough. We have been in conversation about what those numbers should be. It is going to be 7 to 5. And it is tough. The tax reconciliation bill we just did was 2 to 1. It is always tough, telling our fellow Senators that, no, you can't be on this conference report because we want a reasonable number of people.…”