Political Quotes

“In a moment I will offer an amendment, and I know the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee is here, but I wish to lay 5 minutes of groundwork. The majority leader was down here earlier today talking about all the ``necessary votes'' that we have to have before everyone leaves town before the holidays. Of course, he was talking about a series of votes on nominees that he himself has set up since he is, in essence, the traffic cop for the Senate, and he gets to set the agenda unilaterally. We know that while the majority leader has set up this series of votes on nominations--none of which are urgent and couldn't be done in January, and all of which are controversial--the majority leader is refusing to allow any vote on restoring pension benefits to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Services. As we have talked about repeatedly over the last couple of days, the recent budget deal cuts their pension benefits by some $6 billion over 10 years, and we have learned that this agreement slashes the pension benefits of some of our wounded warriors, people who are medically retired. Senator Murray from Washington, the distinguished chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has called this a technical error--a technical error. She said it needs to be fixed, but we will do this next year. Merry Christmas to our wounded warriors whose pensions, by virtue of the legislation that passed yesterday, have now been cut.…”