On the recordSeptember 21, 2012
I will just take 1 minute before I yield back. With respect to the question, first of all--I obviously do not run the Senate so I cannot speak about what happened with respect to these other pieces of legislation, but I am responsible for the Foreign Relations Committee. This particular amendment was filed at the desk on September 19. We are here under rule XIV. That is not months of work. The first time I heard of it was when it came to the desk. So this could well have been a policy we amended in the committee, that we worked on appropriately, came up with some appropriate way of dealing with legitimate issues. I am not denigrating the legitimacy of some of the issues the Senator from Kentucky raises. We had a very profound conversation with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan the other day. The Foreign Relations Committee met with her. We went into Dr. Afridi's situation in some detail, and there are other issues raised here. But just to come in out of the whole blue and file it at the desk and say let's change years of policy with a country that we, in the case of Egypt, desperately rely on with respect to the peace process in the Middle East, sustaining the peace agreement with Israel--it just defies rationale about how you make good foreign policy. I will have more to say about it in a moment, but I just want to make it clear this did not come to the floor until September 19 at the desk and it is here under rule XIV. Mr. McCAIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
