Sam Brownback: “I rise in support of the Byrd amendment. This is a positive amendment in the overall bill, it is appropriate, and it was…”

“I rise in support of the Byrd amendment. This is a positive amendment in the overall bill, it is appropriate, and it was the topic of a great deal of discussion previously as we were putting together this bill overall. The bill, in its design, had a number of people working together to try to figure it out. One of the most contentious issues was this issue about the time deadline in which we would be able to accomplish these biometric identifiers. The administration had a great deal of concern about meeting the very aggressive dates set in the overall bill. A number of our colleagues involved in the negotiation said: We realize this may be aggressive, but we need to push it because this is such an important issue. A lot of people within the executive branch were saying: I don't know that we can meet this deadline. This amendment will be well received by a number of people who believed the time deadlines put forward in the original bill were just too aggressive to be accomplished. This will set a far more realistic date as to when we accomplish it. I know people in the executive branch will try to do this as quickly as possible. They are clearly going to be far more comfortable with this date as being more realistic, one that can be accomplished. For those reasons, I urge my colleagues to support this Byrd amendment to the bill.”