John Kerry: “I thank the Chair, and I particularly want to thank the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from New Jersey, Senators…”

“I thank the Chair, and I particularly want to thank the Senator from Maryland and the Senator from New Jersey, Senators Mikulski and Lautenberg, for their leadership and efforts to try to guarantee that we have a sensible environmental policy in this country. What is really astonishing is that this is the 10th time this year that we are debating the environmental programs of this country, the 10th time we are debating the 1996 budget. We are now in the sixth month of the current fiscal year, and we are setting a historic first for the United States of America. In the 11 years that I have been in the U.S. Senate, never--never once--have we had to go into a succeeding fiscal year and still be debating the items of the last fiscal year. I would say, without any question at all, that the responsibility that fell to the majority last year or the year before, when they won the election, has really not been discharged properly. I remember when we were in the majority, in the last occasion of 1994, all 13 appropriations bills were passed on time. Whatever compromises were necessary in order to achieve that, we understood the Constitution of this country, we understood the nature of the system. What has really happened here in Washington in 1995 and 1996 is that a small band of radicals in the House of Representatives have fundamentally hijacked the Constitution of this country.”