Charles E. Schumer Quotes

I would never filibuster any President’s judicial nominee, period. I might vote against them, but I will always see they came to a vote.

The Democrats filibustered something in the Senate when I was eight years old. I don't remember what it was on and I didn't honestly care when I was eight years old. I cared about the history and the Senate rules.

No one ever built the filibuster rule. It just kind of was created.

If you read the Senate rules, there are provisions where the Senate parliamentarian can be overridden.

I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 senators there and they’ll all die because they won't have 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.

In the Senate, where 60 votes are required to do anything important, you have to work with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

There is no Senate rule governing the proper uses of the filibuster.

It used to be in the Senate that if you were filibustering, you stood up. There was a physical dimension to it, that you - when you became exhausted you would have to leave the floor. That was the idea of the filibuster.

There are two ways of looking at the talking filibuster. My way is as a form of unanimous consent.

I wish to make a unanimous-consent request, the necessity of which I find incredible. I ask unanimous consent to use hand calculators on the Senate floor.... I understand that the rules are so ancient that the ability to use these calculators except by unanimous consent seems to be in doubt.

If somebody feels strongly enough to be willing to stop the Senate, he should at least be required to be on the floor and explain why.

The filibuster has only been around for 2564 years.

The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate's traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president's judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.

If I have to filibuster on the Senate floor, I'll even read the King James Bible until the wall is funded.

The filibuster is used more aggressively, so I think doing each individual appropriations bill through regular order would be a home run. But I think that we should try to hit a few singles.

Even before the hearings that led to confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts, senators were saying they were reserving judgment on how they would vote until they got to know him better at the hearings.

The only tool the Democrats have is in the Senate, and it's the filibuster.

I read where they are going to limit debate in the Senate. It used to be that a man could talk all day, but now, as soon as he tells all he knows, he has to sit down. Most of these birds will just be getting up and nodding now. Why, some of them won't be able to answer roll call.

Call Loretta Lynch for a vote. Get her confirmed. Put her in place. Let her do her job.

There is a limitation on debate, which is unlike other bills, for 20 hours, but there is no limitation on amendments. In other words, Republicans if they wanted to, and I suspect they do, could offer literally thousands of amendments and keep Senate in session for weeks and months.

I remember George Mitchell - I was doing the Clarence Thomas hearing, and there were 48 senators declared they were not prepared to vote for him at the front end. We could have filibustered that and stopped it. George and I - George was the leader at the time - took the heat from every liberal group saying, "No, no, that's not the way the system is supposed to work, since the Constitution - the president shall propose and the Constitution shall dispose, we're going to let them hear this."

The U.S. Senate - an old scow which doesn't move very fast, but never sinks.

The President doesn't just appoint the Secretary of State, he appoints the Secretary of State, and then the Congress votes. And if the Congress approves that person, that person becomes Secretary of State.

The Senate should consider a rule ensuring that every judicial nominee receives a vote by the Senate within 180 days of being nominated by the president.

Democrats would use every tool in our arsenal to ensure that his [Charles Pickering] nomination is rejected again this year.