On the recordJuly 21, 2011
I hope we will move quickly to the real business, which is avoiding default. Let me say, I think there is one effort we ought to be engaged in, and that is the serious effort of passing the McConnell-Reid, Reid-McConnell initiative, or whatever you want to call it. Their initiative is not kicking anything down the road. Their initiative requires, just like the base closing commission, for the Senate to deal with the big deal in a very short period of time. If colleagues want to speed that period of time up, I wouldn't object. I think that would make sense. What we need to do is to recognize that in the next few days we do not have the time to put the kind of common sense to the task that will allow us to get the budget figures from the CBO, that will allow us to know with certainty what we are doing with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or all of these other important initiatives are being done in the most deliberative and thoughtful way possible. That is what this institution is supposed to be about. That is what makes the Senate the world's most deliberative body, but it hasn't been particularly deliberative on this subject in the past months.…
