Tom Harkin: “I say to my colleagues here in the Chamber today that I announced last year before we adjourned for the holiday recess…”

“I say to my colleagues here in the Chamber today that I announced last year before we adjourned for the holiday recess that because of the failure of the Senate to provide for cloture on the farm bill so that we could have a reasonable amount of time for debate and come to closure on it, the Senator from Iowa, this Senator, was not going to agree to any unanimous consent on any judges or anything else that came before the Senate until we completed the farm bill. I was approached the other day and was asked if we would let a couple of these judges go. It was my intention at that time to say no. I am not interested in anything passing here until we got a farm bill finished and sent to conference. But it has come to my attention that there seems to be some movement towards reaching some agreement to have either a defined list of amendments and/or a time limit so that we could bring this farm bill to some closure. So in the spirit of trying to work on a bipartisan basis and trying to reach some agreement, I withdrew my objection so we could go ahead and permit these two judges to go through.”