Trent Lott: “As the distinguished Senator knows, if he will yield, Mr. President, the scheduling does to a large degree rest in the…”

“As the distinguished Senator knows, if he will yield, Mr. President, the scheduling does to a large degree rest in the hands of the majority leader. But it is usually done in coordination with both sides of the aisle. Like on the Mexico certification, or decertification, issue, quite often it can be objected to. I mean that, if I today proceeded to call up the House-passed version with the idea of offering a bipartisan substitute to it, we would have to get agreement to do that. The other option is to just call up decertification, which we could do, and start the 10-hour process running. The point, though, is that you have to work with a lot of different parties. And I intend to do that. I think the decision will come up in April, and we will work in the direction to say that we can get it up by a date certain. Once again, I think it might raise expectations beyond what is achievable. But we are continuing to work on that, and we are going to do it this very day.”