Jon Kyl: “let me take a few minutes to respond to the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy. He…”

“let me take a few minutes to respond to the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy. He is absolutely correct that constitutional amendments should not be rushed. We have taken a long time to get to this point--4 years. As a matter of fact, in the Judiciary Committee alone we have heard from 34 witnesses and have had 802 pages of testimony and submissions. In the House, there have been hearings. They have had 32 witnesses and about 575 pages of testimony and submissions. In other words, there have been about 66 witnesses and nearly 1,400 pages of testimony. I commend the report of the Judiciary Committee to anyone who would like a really good read on this entire subject and the reasons why we need a Federal constitutional amendment. The bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee 12-5. We took our time getting it to the Senate floor to make sure everybody had their say. The distinguished ranking minority member needed additional time to file his comments to the report. That was granted. He did so. We agree there should be adequate time for the debate of this constitutional amendment, but we disagree that there should be a filibuster to use unnecessary time of the Senate. Senator Leahy talked about a lot of things. He talked about abortion, gun control, a balanced budget amendment and Ronald Reagan, the juvenile crime bill, nursing home fraud, and term limits. I would suggest that we ought to stick to the subject.…”