On the recordDecember 19, 2010
the Senator is absolutely correct. The key question is, Is there sufficient support to ratify the treaty? Once we get to that sort of question postcloture, when and if that is invoked, that is what the threshold would be for the passage of this treaty. It is not as if you have cloture and all of a sudden, boom, only 51 votes are necessary to pass it. Secondly, I would say to my colleague--and I want to emphasize this-- if the majority leader were to put the cloture motion in this evening, it doesn't ripen until Tuesday. So we would have the rest of today, all of tomorrow, and Tuesday to have amendments; to continue as we are now. Then, if it did pass, we would have another 30 hours, which, as we all know, takes the better part of 2 days. So we are looking at Thursday under that kind of schedule, and I know a lot of Senators are hoping not to be here on Thursday. So I think that is quite a lot of time within the context of this. But the Senator is correct. The answer to his question is yes.
