Political Quotes

“both the Democratic leader and I will have a few comments, but what I have just done is filed a cloture motion, which I have done so reluctantly because I really have been very pleased over the past couple weeks as we addressed a very important issue on lobbying reform and ethics reform, an issue that is critical to restoring the faith the American people really deserve to have in their Government. We have been working together, as I said, in a bipartisan way. I thought until a few hours ago we had a very good chance of completing this bill this week. At the leadership level, we worked together very well, and the four managers--we have four managers because we merged the two bills--have been working together effectively and lined up a number of amendments to vote on today and tomorrow as well. As I said, I thought we would be able to finish it. Having said that, what happened today is an amendment came to the floor under circumstances that I am not going to go through right now, but it is such that it really would take us off the course of this bipartisan lobbying reform bill. We had discussions as to whether that amendment would be withdrawn, but it was made very clear after the discussions among us that the amendment would come back later tonight, tomorrow, or the next day.…”