Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I hopefully will not take the 5 minutes, but let me express to my colleagues the deep, deep anguish I feel in what we are doing and how we are doing it. I cannot rise in support of the base amendment, the Gilman resolution, nor the Gejdenson amendment to it, nor the amendment of my dear friend the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Fowler), or substitute. Much has been said about the timing of why we are here and that we should not be here at this time. I agree with that, but I am not sure that I attach the responsibility for that fact the way others have done so. If our President had assured us that, upon being able to negotiate an agreement, he would come to us and seek our approval for going forward with military deployments in Kosovo, it would have been the time for this debate to have taken place, after the agreement had been reached. I almost certainly would have been one of those who would have supported doing what he asked if there was an agreement we could look at and know what it provided and that it was a bona fide agreement. But here we are with the certainty that he would not come to the Congress and yet he does not have an agreement and we do not even know whether or not at such time somebody in Paris signs their names to a stack of papers that it will indeed be an agreement of anyone.”