Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise, again, in opposition to the nomination of Patricia Smith to serve as the Solicitor of the Labor Department. As I noted on Monday, the Framers crafted a system of checks and balances to ensure that each government branch has a means to review the actions of other branches. In the Senate, one of those checks is our constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on executive branch nominations. The leader earlier talked about the amount of time it takes for cloture on people. It does take quite a while, but it is part of the process. I can tell you, when there is a hearing on a person, if there are 270 questions to start with and the other people in a similar position have a couple dozen questions, you know there is a little bit of a problem that could develop with that one person, depending on how they answer or don't answer the questions. This isn't something new. This isn't something that happened just this year. I was chairman of the HELP Committee for 2 years and then ranking member for 2 years. During that time, President Bush had an appointment as the FDA Commissioner that was stopped. We never even got him to the floor. We had an MSHA Director--I think it was the first MSHA Director--who worked in a mine. That was the mining safety person. We had a Surgeon General and others. Then the schedule was set up so there were no recesses so there couldn't be recess appointments.…”