Cord Byrd: “I don't propose to have the answer to this problem. But it just seems to me that we are always caught up against a…”

“I don't propose to have the answer to this problem. But it just seems to me that we are always caught up against a holiday, where we have a break the next week. And here we have this bill, and we will have the tax portion of the reconciliation process that will follow after that. And we are asked to cut a little of the time off here, cut a little off there. It would seem to me that if we could get started on these measures earlier, we would not be faced with a situation in which the managers have to stay here far into the evening hours, while other Senators go home. It seems to me that if we had been able to get to this measure earlier, we could have had more time. But here we are, and it seems to work out this way upon every occasion, where we are backed up to a wall of some kind, where there is the attempt to cut 20 hours down to 15, 12, or 10, or an attempt to cut 50 down to 40 on the budget resolution. We always get the question, ``Would you be willing to cut some time off of the 40 hours, cut it down to 30?'' ``Would you be willing to go home and come back Monday and say that 15 of the hours, or 10 hours, or 20 hours have been consumed?'' So I suppose these situations could be avoided. Let me get down to the point. Would someone explain what is in this amendment? As I explained, four or five Senators had amendments that they wanted to call up, but they were waiting to see what was in the managers' amendment.”