Tom Harkin: “And we had the juvenile justice bill that included the school safety provision, the child safety gun locks and included…”

“And we had the juvenile justice bill that included the school safety provision, the child safety gun locks and included a fix to close the gunshow loophole. Why are they only willing to vote on this important legislation after the election? We have been denied--I don't want to say the Senator from Minnesota and I have been denied; the people of this country have been denied the right to have their Senators come on this floor and vote on these issues, denied because the majority leader won't bring it up. That is why they keep putting these conference committee bills together. They now want to put together the Commerce-State-Justice bill. I wanted to offer an amendment to restore funding to the Byrne grants for local law enforcement. The Byrne grant is $100 million short from last year's funding level. But I'm not allowed to do that because they want to skip the process and attach to another bill. The VA-HUD and Transportation--again, we haven't voted on VA and HUD. Do you want to know why? Because we want to do something about veterans' health benefits. They want to vote on that after the election, too. They don't want the veterans of this country to know exactly how they vote on veterans' health benefits, I say to my friend.”