senate procedures Quotes

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.

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

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'

Here's where I'm different from a senator. We pass continuing resolutions. We pass appropriations bills.

Now, for this book I had to learn the world of the Senate, which is really for all that's written about the Senate, an unknowing world and its mores, and the way things work with subcommittees and all. I loved learning about that.

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

Democrats didn't agree with policies. How do I know? Because they voted against them when they came up on the floor of the House and the Senate.

For a long time in American history, people didn't even come up before the Senate. They didn't come before the Judiciary Committee, and up until about 1923, something like that.

There's a learning curve to understanding how the Senate operates.

The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world.

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

The classic example I've used - I'm sure you've heard me say it before - was Mark Begich in Alaska who was here for a full six years and never had a roll call vote on an amendment on the floor of the Senate, which Dan Sullivan tells me he used on virtually a daily basis. So the notion that protecting all of your members from votes is a good idea politically, I think, has been pretty much disproved by the recent [Barack Obama] election.

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.

It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of ones voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate.

The Senate used to be a place of great debate and accomplishment. Now it is run like a dictatorship shutting out the voices of millions of Americans.

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

When a nominee doesn't get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules, you should change the nominee.

I had a personal email when I was in the Senate, as the vast majority of senators do. It was very convenient. I did all of my business on personal emails.

I believe [filibustering judicial nominees] is in violation of the Constitution

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.

Well, another senator rose and said {as they always do} 'Does the gentleman yield?' They always say that - least they call each other 'gentleman' in there. But the tone they put on the word, it would sound more appropriate if they came right out and said 'Would the coyote from Maine yield?' 'cause that's about the way it sounds. Well, then, the other senator says 'I yield' (for if he don't the other guy'll keep on talking anyhow). So the coyote from Maine says 'I yield to...the polecat from Oregon!'

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.

Harry Reid employed the so-called nuclear option, broke the Senate rules to change the Senate rules, lowered the threshold for confirmation from 60 votes to 51 votes. And it is a direct result of Harry Reid that we now have the most conservative Cabinet in decades.