Dick Lugar: “I will not add to the frustration and discomfort of my chairman except to empathize with him, having stood in a similar…”

“I will not add to the frustration and discomfort of my chairman except to empathize with him, having stood in a similar situation 5 or 6 years ago when we last proceeded with the farm bill. I found it was seemingly an endless task. It does finally come to conclusion. That will be good news for the chairman. I will work with him to try to identify the amendments so we can have appropriate debate and votes. Both the chairman and I realize we are near the end of the session, and conference reports on important bills are likely to intrude. The chairman recognizes that. He stated correctly this is the pending business. It ought to be our pending business, aside from the privileged motions on appropriations bills that the leaders have designated for debate on Monday and early Tuesday. I believe there probably is a finite set of amendments. I suggested earlier during the day that we will compile a list of 44 at that time. I think some of those perhaps disappeared in the course of the day. Hopefully others do not emerge. But I think there are some basic issues involving payment limits, for example, that are still out there.”