Bill Nelson: “First of all, I don't want the Senator to be rushed because I came over here so that I could hear the Senator. The…”

“First of all, I don't want the Senator to be rushed because I came over here so that I could hear the Senator. The Senator from Louisiana is so articulate and so passionate. She has laid the case out with the bare facts that if there is any embracing, as there seems to be, of support for small business, including a lending facility of $30 billion to try to get money through the community banks into small businesses, which are desperate--and my State of Florida has a lot of small business--if there is this unanimity of feeling, then why are we playing these parliamentary games of adding on, insisting on the other side of the aisle's position that they want amendments that have nothing to do with small business and, therefore, cluttering up, as the Senator from Louisiana says? Is the world coming to an end? Is the Senate coming to an end where we are in such perpetual gridlock that something that is so commonsense as this legislation to help small business--to help that family at the breakfast table the Senator so eloquently described--are we at the point that the Senate is incapable of functioning because one side says it has to have its way of having amendments that it wants that has nothing to do with small business? Have we come to the point of complete gridlock?”