Barbara Mikulski: “pretty soon we will be coming to the last round of amendments to the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill. When…”

“pretty soon we will be coming to the last round of amendments to the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill. When he is on the floor, I will thank, publicly and personally, the distinguished Senator from Alabama, Mr. Shelby. We certainly worked on a bipartisan basis to move this bill, to accomplish national objectives, and to respond to the compelling human and financial needs of our neighbors in the Gulf States. Moving this legislation has been enjoyable because there has been such a spirit of bipartisan cooperation. Senators have worked on their amendments. They have offered them jointly. In a few minutes, we will be voting on an amendment by Senator Snowe of Maine and John Kerry of Massachusetts to help small business, particularly, in relation to Katrina. That has been the example throughout. As the ranking member on this new subcommittee, I hope the spirit of the Senate, in moving forward on this bill, will be the spirit of the Senate all the time. We need more of that. We need more civility. We need more collegiality and more of that spirit of ``let's get it done'' and ``let's get it done together.'' There were many issues that were new to me, at least the depth of the national problem. We are all familiar with Katrina.…”