John Kerry: “But I would like to say that I understand the difficulties in which the majority leader finds himself. He gets…”

“But I would like to say that I understand the difficulties in which the majority leader finds himself. He gets approached by people on both sides, from all sides, and it is difficult to bring this piece to the floor. But there is a process by which we have been working and by which, I think, most of us understood that we were sort of teeing this legislation up for the floor. I think it has been an exceptional process. I applaud the Senator from Arizona, the chairman of the Commerce Committee, for the way in which he has tried to meld those forces over the course of the last months. The truth is that the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from South Carolina, who is the ranking member and who could have stood in the way, significantly along the way here, of progress, has moved along the way to get us to where we are with an understanding of where he stood with respect to critical issues. Everybody here understands how you approach any of these negotiations.”