Jeff Merkley Quotes

For me an hour-long speech is not a filibuster. It is a brief observation.

I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care if the Senate doesn’t do one other piece of business this year. You’ve got to keep this bill on the floor. You can tell Mansfield [the Senate Majority Leader] … The President of the United States doesn’t care if this bill is there forever. We are not going to have anything else hit the floor until this bill is passed.

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.

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

You know, the purpose of reconciliation is to avoid the filibuster. The filibuster is an effort to talk something to death.

We've seen filibusters of bills and nominations that ultimately passed with 90 or more votes. Why filibuster something that has that kind of support? Just to slow down the process and keep the Senate from working.

What has the filibuster become? The filibuster has become a tool for slowing everything down…a tool by which one senator who announces that his object is to impose gridlock on the Senate, can do so.

Some people may call it a filibuster. I call it an extended educational dialogue.

Let the filibuster be no more. Let the people decide.

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.

If the bill remains what it is now, I will not be able to support a cloture motion before final passage. Therefore I will try to stop the passage of the bill.

This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted.

They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.

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.

Filibusters should require 35 senators to... make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. The number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

What happens is that, you know, on Mondays, at least in the Senate, you know, Monday night we'd have what you'd call a bed-check vote. Just to get, you know, the machinery of the Senate up and running so they can start the committee process; on Tuesday morning, things go. By Thursday, you know, jet fumes, the smell of jet fumes.

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.

If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees.

Reconciliation is a special budget procedure to change entitlement and tax laws. It cannot be filibustered and requires only a simple majority in the Senate to be passed. It is primarily intended for deficit and mandatory spending reduction.

My view of the filibuster is either you've got to lower vote edge or make people really filibuster if they feel that seriously about a piece of legislation.

Cloture is simply cutting off debate.

The Senate as an institution is broken. We're not doing the work of the American people and the rules are being abused. The only way to get us back to the traditions where the Senate is doing the work of the American people is to change the rules.

And the president is all wrong when he maintains that a nominee should have an up-or-down vote. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution doesn't say that that nominee shall have any vote at all. There doesn't have to even be a vote.

The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive.