Tom Harkin: “We are expecting that there will probably be some amendments to this bill, and that is fine. That is the way the Senate…”

“We are expecting that there will probably be some amendments to this bill, and that is fine. That is the way the Senate should operate. We expect all amendments to this bill will be relevant to the bill. I hope Senators on both sides of the aisle who want to see this bill passed expeditiously would keep that in mind. If there is a relevant amendment and Senators feel they want to bring that up, that is fine. That is the way the Senate should operate. I hope nonrelevant amendments which have nothing to do with the bill will not be promoted on the Senate floor. That would only slow the bill down and put us into some untenable position on the Senate floor in terms of getting this bill expeditiously done. We cannot allow unrelated, partisan disagreements or Presidential- election year politics to interfere with this bill and keep us from completing our job. So amendments that are offered must be relevant to the bill, and we must pass it now. The clock is ticking. Everything ends by the end of this summer. We are out of here in August. We have the 4th of July break and Memorial Day break coming up. In order for us to go to conference with the House and work out whatever differences we may have and get this back here so we can finish it by late June or early July--I hope we could even finish this by late June so there would not be any disruptions at all in the FDA and their planning for the future or in the industry itself.…”