Joe Biden: “just for the sake of discussion, if there were 10 very important provisions in this bill when we passed it out of the…”

“just for the sake of discussion, if there were 10 very important provisions in this bill when we passed it out of the Senate, it has come back to us with 4--I am not being literal--with fewer than we sent over. Fewer than 50 percent of the provisions that I think are important in this bill remain in the bill. In truth, when the Senator and I got to conference, there were probably only 10 percent of the provisions we thought important in the bill. To the credit of the Senator from Utah, he was able to get back additional provisions in the bill. For that I compliment him. What I have been fighting about all afternoon here is trying to add back provisions that I think were mindlessly removed and removed tools that we could make available to law enforcement to protect my children and me and all of us in this Chamber and around this country. This is the one portion of the conference report that I am seeking to delete that has made the bill worse than when it went out of here. Up to now I have been arguing that we sent a bill out of here with a lot of good things that the House stripped out and I wanted to put them back in. Not only did the House take out the bulk of the really good things that were invaluable to fight terrorism, but it added some things which I think are counterproductive.”