Dan Coats: “I would like to just see if I understand the situation here. It seems that the coroner has pronounced these two bills…”

“I would like to just see if I understand the situation here. It seems that the coroner has pronounced these two bills dead, and we all wanted to look at the body and we have all concluded that they are dead, or most of us have concluded that they are dead. In that light, it is hard for me to understand why the sense-of-the-Senate resolution of the Senator from New Hampshire is something that needs to be delayed. He feels, as a matter of law--and I daresay that would be supported by a strong majority of people on both sides of the aisle--that the President ought to seek congressional authorization for putting 25,000 American troops in Bosnia, something the President has already indicated he wants to do. But the Senator from New Hampshire has said he will not offer that as a matter of law, nor will he offer it on the continuing resolution, which is a bill which is not dead and will go through here. He will put it on a bill that we have all agreed is going nowhere, and yet objection is raised to the Senator doing that, that the bill has to be examined. It is a sense of the Senate and something we have already voted on. It is being put on a bill that we have all agreed is going nowhere. The President has already signified his support for the notion, but the Senator is not allowed to go forward with it. Can anybody explain to me why we now need to delay to examine something that is going nowhere?”