Tom Harkin: “I think what is happening is that the foundation on which this Senate has been based is beginning to crumble. It is not…”

“I think what is happening is that the foundation on which this Senate has been based is beginning to crumble. It is not all gone yet. But I was thinking, the Senate is like a foundation. If you pull one brick out, OK; it still holds. You pull another brick out--the foundation is still strong. What is happening, I believe, and I say this in all candor, the majority side, for the last several years, has been pulling some bricks out of the foundation. They pulled one out and no one complained. They pulled another one out and nothing happened. What concerns me is that one feeds on another. So if we take back the majority, do we then say we will take out another brick? And then another brick? And then it bounces to the other side? Pretty soon the foundation crumbles and nobody can point to that first brick and when it was pulled out. That is what I see, a kind of insidious pulling out of the bricks of the foundation of the Senate. Yet since things do happen, at the end of the year there is this big omnibus that is put together and people say: There you go, no big deal. But I predict pretty soon the foundation is going to start crumbling if we don't stop pulling out the bricks.”