Political Quotes

“I am just going to say that I know the distinguished Senators from Vermont and Maine have been on the floor talking about an amendment they hope to offer to this anti-trafficking bill. But the sad fact is that no one is going to get to offer any amendments to this bill unless the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, decides that we are going to have an open amendment process because right now there are objections to anyone setting any of the amendments for votes, much less asking to set aside the pending amendment and making your amendment the pending amendment so it could be considered and scheduled for a vote. I wish to make sure our colleagues understand the rationale because I have had conversations with a number of members of the Judiciary Committee, which voted unanimously to support this bill. That doesn't happen very often, that we have that kind of unanimous support. Ten of our Democratic colleagues are cosponsors on the original bill. So it might sound strange that after 10 Democrats have cosponsored the bill, after all of the Republicans and all of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have voted to support this bill--and the minority leader, Senator Reid, has agreed to dispense with the normal procedural process to get the bill on the floor--that we would now have this unusual situation where this bill is being hijacked and being used to debate something that it really doesn't have very much to do about, and that is the subject of abortion.…”