Joe Lieberman: “One of my favorite expressions is: Only in America, this great country of ours. I was thinking, as we approach this…”

“One of my favorite expressions is: Only in America, this great country of ours. I was thinking, as we approach this debate on the motion to invoke cloture, that only in the Senate, the great deliberative body we are, would we find Members about to do what I fear they are going to do, which is to vote against a proposal that they themselves have made because they want to vote on it without anyone else having a right to amend it. That is where we are. We have had a good debate. We have the Gramm-Miller substitute amendment to the underlying Senate Governmental Affairs Committee proposal that created the Homeland Security Department. Senator Gramm and Senator Miller said their proposal and ours are 95 percent the same. We have a disagreement about how to protect homeland security workers in the new Department and still retain the authority of the President over national security. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, working together with Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, have found common ground. They presented and crafted an amendment that gives a little bit of reassurance against arbitrary action to the Federal workers before they have their union rights, collective bargaining rights, taken away because the President determines those rights are in conflict with national security.”