Dan Coats: “first of all, I commend all the Republicans and Democrats who have worked so hard together--nearly one-fifth of us in…”

“first of all, I commend all the Republicans and Democrats who have worked so hard together--nearly one-fifth of us in this Congress--hour after hour, meeting after meeting, and flexibility has been provided to both sides by Senator Lieberman, Senator Collins and their bill and Senators Chambliss, McCain, Hutchison, and others in terms of trying to reach a consensus. Those who listened to the Senator from Maryland yesterday know we are given the unclassified version of the nature of this threat. Add to that the classified version, and it is truly a threat that needs to be addressed. It is despicable that the majority leader of the Senate, when we were so close to putting together something to bring joint support of what everybody knows we need to do and want to do--so close with agreements from Democrats and Republicans, ranking members and chairmen of the relevant committees, and presenting a package which would grant limited time and limited germane amendments--to deny us that opportunity. Yet here we are faced with a dilemma of an imminent threat facing the people of the United States of America and a vote whether to continue the process, continue to work with something that potentially could kill this for the rest of the session and maybe even next year or something that grants to the White House an abuse of executive power to mandate things through executive order, which we have seen on a number of other occasions.…”