Judd Gregg: “Yes, but I control the ability to allow those amendments to come forward. And, in fact, it has been made fairly clear…”

“Yes, but I control the ability to allow those amendments to come forward. And, in fact, it has been made fairly clear that control will be exercised by the leadership in a way that limits amendments that are brought forward to those which are agreed to by the majority leader until we get to the point where the majority leader is going to file a motion for cloture, which, on a farm bill, of course, would most likely be successful because we all know everybody around here is 'in the field,' so to say. I would not say 'in the tent,' but they are in the field for the farmer. So as a practical matter, this is an extraordinarily closed process. Just to use one example, the majority leader said--he threw out, and maybe it was just a throw-away line--estate taxes shouldn't be brought onto this bill because they are not relevant, under the majority leader's terms. If I want to offer an amendment which says we should reform the death tax--which I might like to offer in light of the fact there is a tax title there--I happen to think that has a huge impact on the farming community because, for the most part, it is family farms and small businesses that are most impacted by the death tax. But we have already been told that would not be a relevant amendment.”