Political Quotes

“I think of myself as one of the calmest people around here, but a lot of facts and numbers have been tossed around here. Let's get a few in perspective. When this bill was before the Judiciary Committee, there were 301 amendments filed. We put them online. Every single person saw a week and a half in advance what the amendments were. We then brought them up. I would bring up one from one party and then one from another. We did this day after day after day into the night until people said we have no more amendments we want to bring up. We adopted 136 of those amendments, all but 3 of them with Republican and Democratic votes. To say nobody has had a chance to amend this--we had nearly 140 amendments, including amendments from the Senator from Iowa, others, and myself. All but 3 of these 136 were by bipartisan votes. I well remember the last night of that markup, late in the evening. I said, does any Senator, Republican or Democratic, have another amendment they want? No. There were not any more amendments, and we voted out the bill. We have offered to have rollcall votes on 15 Democratic amendments, 17 Republican amendments, and then another 29 amendments that everybody agrees should be passed and do them en bloc in the managers' package. Now I know some--not the Senator from Iowa because he has been here a long time, but I know some Senators are new to this body. I have been here 38 years.…”