Political Quotes

“I appreciate the leader's kind remarks. I have been diligently working on the collective bargaining bill. It is an important part of the process to get the full debate out. We are being precluded from that process now. We have had three amendments brought up. None of those were mine. I have five amendments that I would like to have debated that address what I see as serious flaws in the bill, but I am being precluded from even bringing up one of those. I was given the offer, take it or leave it, that there could be two Republican amendments, period, and I could decide from among my own and others which would be the two. As I pointed out at the very beginning of this bill, this bill is flawed. It did not go to committee. This happens every time a bill does not go to committee. We have a process with bills before the committee where people can sit down and look at amendments and revise the amendments until there is agreement between the two sides. That is the only reason that a committee such as Health, Education, Labor and Pensions can get bills done. We often take a look at all of the amendments when they are in committee and decide that we will work on those before they go to the floor. Otherwise, as contentious a committee as we have, which handles the volume of work it does, we would get nothing done. But we get a lot done.”