"You may have heard that the majority cites an example in 1992 where the chair made a mistake and allowed something similar to happen. But one mistake does not a precedent make.

For example, there is precedent for a Senator being beaten with a cane here in the Senate. If mistakes were the rule, the caning of Senators would be in order. Fortunately for all of us, it is not."

"The lines between the parties have gotten very clear over the last few months and its not just health care, climate change, the financial takeover, its card check. It's this very liberal agenda that has ordinary Americans engaged and angry. We see wide swings in the polls with not just Republicans but with Independents and Democrats, and so I think its really important for Republicans to have a lot of clarity in what we say. We don't want to be obstructionists on any policy they're willing to deal with fairly, but no one can say that this is a fair process, when they basically have a parliamentarian in their back pocket."

"The problem we have, I think if you look at the last couple of weeks, we were working in good faith and the strategy they were using was one of bait switch. While we were debating a decoy on the floor, while they were developing another one in secret, so to continue to play along with this as if it's a legitimate process makes no sense. So the strategy now has to be we make sure we slow things down enough that we can actually have a chance to find out what's in this final bill, and they're trying to push it up against Christmas, so they can pass it when nobody is paying attention, but what we have to do is push it past Christmas, so people know what's happening. It's a waste of time to work with people in good faith who don't even have the real bill on the floor."