Joe Biden: “Mr. President, as the Senate begins reconsideration of the resolution of ratification for enlargement--and I and others…”

“Mr. President, as the Senate begins reconsideration of the resolution of ratification for enlargement--and I and others who are for or against expansion all agree on one thing: I strongly believe it was a mistake, for whatever scheduling reasons, to have brought this up, then delayed it, put other things before it, and then brought it back up. So my hope is--and those who support expansion and those who oppose it have all communicated to their respective leaders that we hope nothing will intervene during the consideration of this debate so that we can give it the time and attention and detail that the public is entitled to. The truth of the matter is, all those folks sitting back behind the bar, back there on both sides, they, along with me and a number of others, have already devoted hundreds of hours to this. This is not a new deal. This is not something that all of a sudden we woke up one morning and said, you know, I feel like expansion today, let's expand, and here we go, let's go through it. This has been a long, serious debate, which has taken place within NATO among the military types and the political types.”