Heidi Alexander: “being a majority leader is not an easy job whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Some good things have been…”

“being a majority leader is not an easy job whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Some good things have been happening in the Senate recently, and I think we should credit both the majority leader and the Republican leader with helping to make that happen. Over the last few weeks we have seen the water resources bill come to the floor. The majority leader allowed Senator Boxer and Senator Vitter to manage the amendment process, to handle the necessary arguments that always occur about what they will be. They came to a conclusion and passed a bill. The bill went through committee, went through the floor. It is a very important bill because it deals with locks, dams, and ports in the United States. We want to make sure that as the Panama Canal is widened and deepened, that ports in the United States are deep enough to receive the bigger ships and that the locks and the dams are in good enough shape so that commerce can move through the company and the jobs can be created. That is an important piece of legislation. And now we are on the farm bill and we see the Senator from Mississippi and the Senator from Michigan managing a bill. There is plenty of opportunity for amendments, as far as I have been able to tell, and that has been very helpful. At the same time, we have coming out of the Judiciary Committee, after several days of intense work, a bill on immigration.…”