Cord Byrd: “Now, that is a shame. That is a disgrace upon the escutcheon of the Senate. I am greatly concerned about that process. I…”

“Now, that is a shame. That is a disgrace upon the escutcheon of the Senate. I am greatly concerned about that process. I have been, and I have many times expressed it to my dear friend, Ted Stevens, who has worked his tail off in trying to get these bills through the committee and through the Senate. Now, we cannot go on like this. We just cannot go on like this. I hope other Senators and I hope the leadership on both sides will see what can happen when we are brought to the wall, with our backs to the wall, and we have to ram through such important legislation without giving it careful consideration because we do not have the time and we rush these--can you imagine what is happening to the process when we approve appropriations bills in the Senate Committee on Appropriations and then do not bring those bills to the Senate? We do not bring those bills to the Senate. I will tell you, friends, I have been in this body now 46 years this year, and it was never that way in the old times. We always passed the appropriations bills. I believe you will find on the record, we passed them, with my help, on both sides of the aisle. I never did anything by myself. It was an absolute cooperation between both sides of the aisle in the Appropriations Committee. We did not have all of the recriminations and the fault finding. We worked together, and we brought those 13 bills to the floor, and we acted on them.”