On the recordJanuary 25, 2011
Yes, literally up until 4 or 5 years ago you could offer an amendment on the floor, and if you got 51 votes, you won. That happened for--well, I have been here, what, 25, 26 years I guess now, and that is the way it has always been. Sometimes there were tough amendments. Sometimes there were tough amendments by Democrats; sometimes there were tough amendments by Republicans. It did not make any difference who was in the majority or the minority. I do not think people elected us just to have an easy time of it here and not to ever cast tough votes. Sometimes these are tough votes. But I think the Senator from New Mexico is right. We always operated under the fact that a Senator could offer an amendment. Usually you would enter a time agreement. You would say: How much time do you want? Well, you would have an hour or an hour and a half or 2 hours, something like that. You would have a reasonable time agreement, and you would have debate and then a vote. Sometimes people would move to table it, and that was fine, but at least 51 votes decided that. Now, as the Senator pointed out, you have to have 60 votes for any amendment, a supermajority. For any single amendment you want to bring up on the Senate floor, you now have to have 60 votes. I say to my friend, it was not always like that.
