Political Quotes

“later today, we are going to vote on whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 2740, the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Defense, State, Foreign Operations, and Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. I must say I have to strongly urge Senators to vote no. I am not urging a ``no'' vote because the House bills are not good bills. The underlying House bills are good bills. If we were going to vote just to consider these bills, that would be easy. I and practically everybody in this Chamber would vote yes, but that is not what we are doing. Senator McConnell has made it very clear that he will bring up H.R. 2740 not to vote on the bills that have been passed by the House of Representatives but for the consideration of the Senate's Defense appropriations bill, which was a partisan bill that was reported along party lines out of the Appropriations Committee. He is going to offer that as a substitute once we proceed to the underlying bills. On top of taking a totally partisan bill as a substitute for legislation that could have easily passed, as part of the substitute, Leader McConnell is going to offer the Energy and Water Appropriations bill as well as the State, Foreign Operations, and Labor-HHS and Education bills. Now, those last two bills have never been considered by the committee. They have not been voted on by the subcommittees, and they have not been voted on by the full committee.…”