Political Quotes

“So on this small business health plan, when it came to the floor, I had the unfortunate experience of having Senator Frist setting a filibuster and filling the tree. ``Filling the tree'' means nobody can make another amendment to the bill. But here is the catch: After this came out of committee, we got the people together who had a problem with the bill, and we had one amendment that would have solved those problems. With the tree filled, that one amendment couldn't come up. That one amendment couldn't happen. So what happened? We talked about the bill and how it lacked this particular part. I kept explaining how we had an amendment that would take care of that. Everybody in the Chamber knew that amendment was not going to happen, and consequently, on a process vote, it was killed with just over 40 votes. That is what happened with the filibuster. Had that amendment been possible, we would have had one of the things in place for health care--just one, but it would have solved a lot of things for a lot of businesses, and that is where a lot of people work in this country, and that is where jobs are. So that is how we can do this job of legislating. My second story would be--and this one is much shorter--about the year Senator Harkin and I brought an FDA bill to the floor. When it got to the floor, we explained to the leader that there were going to be 14 amendments--8 of them would be brought up and would fail, and the other 6 would be withdrawn.…”