Joe Biden: “the majority leader today opened the session by criticizing the President and criticizing the Democrats for what he says…”

“the majority leader today opened the session by criticizing the President and criticizing the Democrats for what he says are a flood of amendments that are holding up this bill. He said that if the Senate is not finished by tomorrow, we will pull the bill and go on to further matters. Let me point out that in all the years that I have been here--and the Senator from Utah has been over here a few years less than I have--one of the things delaying action on the bill today is we are coming off of a recess of a week and half and the Members are not back in town yet. That is one of the reasons there is delay. Let me first say, contrary to the majority leader's representations, we are not trying to delay this bill. Indeed, on the very same day we received the final version of the Republican bill--and we had started off, by the way, with the President's bill. The President introduced a bill, or had 3 Members introduce the bill on his behalf. Senators Kohl, Specter, and myself met with the President at the White House. This was a bipartisan group, including the Republican leadership. We were under the impression that the President's bill would be the bill from which we worked. The Republicans, as is their right, introduced their own bill. One of the problems is that we did not see that bill until toward the middle of the afternoon the day that we went out of here, I think, or maybe the day before we went out. People had not had a chance to read the bill.”