Schedule

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, would the majority leader yield?

Mr. REID. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. McCONNELL. I would just say to my friend, we have a lot of fights around here over things we disagree on, but on this particular measure, this is an unnecessary impasse that we have. We have come very close to a very modest number of amendments. My side would be more than happy to accept time agreements on all of the amendments. I want to second what the majority leader says, that I hope we can indeed work out an agreement for a modest number of amendments with time agreements and wrap up this bill because I certainly share his view that most Members support the underlying measure and the additions to which the majority leader has referred.

Mr. REID. Mr. President, first of all, the other amendments are vexatious. They are argumentative. They are not germane. They are not relevant to this legislation. But it seems that this year, every time we get where we try to get something done, we have had stalling. We had a Senator out here yesterday who had done the work to find out how many times we have been stopped from doing things. Almost 60 times on absolute filibusters we have had to invoke cloture and 30-some-odd times on just objecting to legislation going forward.

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