Tom Harkin: “I am very pleased to hear about the bipartisan agreement that preserves minority rights in the Senate, that preserves…”

“I am very pleased to hear about the bipartisan agreement that preserves minority rights in the Senate, that preserves the right of the minority to extended debate, that preserves the checks and balances that our Founding Fathers prized so highly. My hope now is that after weeks of distraction, after weeks during which the majority leader threatened the nuclear option, to sort of blow up the Senate, now we hopefully can return to the people's business. I thank the 14 Senators, I guess 7 Democrats and 7 Republicans, who worked so hard to bring us back from the brink and get us away from this nuclear option that really would have destroyed the smooth functioning of the Senate. But we have been talking for weeks and weeks about this, about this nuclear option. People I have talked to have been absolutely astonished that the Senate has been distracted by these nuclear option threats. They keep asking me why haven't we been addressing the real concerns that keep Americans up at night: worrying about their jobs, their health care and their families' future. Why is the Senate spending its time on this narrow ideological agenda and ignoring the people's business? The majority leader, the Senator from Tennessee, had planned to keep the Senate up through the night tonight as a prelude to detonating this nuclear option.…”