Political Quotes

“a few moments ago the minority leader was on the floor following up on a discussion that we had had earlier today. I would like to take a moment to respond to his request regarding the pension reform bill conference committee. It looks as though we will have to continue to discuss this over the next 24 hours because we have not made very much progress on a bill that is critically important to the safety and security of the American people. It is being postponed for no good reason. That is what it boils down to. These feeble attempts to explain why we keep putting the bill off are unacceptable at this point. We have to go back to the time line because the facts do speak for themselves. The Senate passed the pension reform bill on November 16 of last year. So that is--November, December, January, February--almost 3 months ago exactly, or close to it. It was passed by a vote of 97 to 2. Almost all of our colleagues in here, 97 to 2, voted for this bill. The House passed its bill about a month later, on December 15. They passed it overwhelmingly, 294 to 132. Shortly after the House passed the bill, we proposed going to conference with a ratio of 7 to 5. That was back in December. It took the other side of the aisle until yesterday to respond. It looks as if it is, again, a pattern of delay and obstruction. They have had over 2 months to broach this concern and resolve the dispute within their caucus as to who would serve on this conference.…”