Heidi Alexander: “I thank the Senator from Vermont. This is a body that operates by unanimous consent, which is a hard thing to get…”

“I thank the Senator from Vermont. This is a body that operates by unanimous consent, which is a hard thing to get accustomed to until you have ever been a part of it. That means any one of us can stop the Senate from opening or having a prayer or saying the Pledge of Allegiance or going to a bill. What I am about to say, I do not want in any way to diminish the rights of any Senator, such as the Senator from Kentucky, to have an opportunity to object to a unanimous consent request. But when everyone has a lot of rights, unless we have some agreement, it is hard to get much done. I have been sometimes critical of the majority leader, but I have also tried to support and praise him for things he has done when I can because I know that either being the Democratic or the Republican leader is not an easy job. So I want to commend the majority leader for offering to accept all relevant amendments, which is a broad category, and this bill seems particularly appropriate for that because we have competing visions for what to do about the post office. It has gone through committee, the regular order, and the bill is bipartisan. There are not a lot of partisan differences. There are a lot of differences, and they need to be worked out. We have probably 2 weeks to do it. So this is a ripe situation for that if we can get consent to do it.…”