Haley Stevens: “everyone should understand the scope of the proposed resolution of the Senator from Arizona. I have before me some…”

“everyone should understand the scope of the proposed resolution of the Senator from Arizona. I have before me some books. The books with white covers are requests I received as chairman of the Appropriations Committee on one bill last January, when we talked about the defense portion of what we call the omnibus bill. The Chair will recall we had 11 bills that had to be put together. This is the portion pertaining just to the foreign assistance subcommittee dealing with matters of foreign assistance. Every one of those pages is a letter from a Member of the Senate asking our committee to change a portion of the appropriations bill for the specific subcommittee received from the administration. The President sends us a budget, and the budget is broken into 13 separate bills. These represent the requests received from Senators to change just 2 of those 11 bills. Senator McCain's proposal would, in effect, say if any one of these requests were granted, it would be subject to a point of order and it would take 60 votes to allow that amendment to stay in the bill. In other words, a Senator could make a motion after the Senate or the committee had agreed to one of these requests, and that motion would be to take it out. It would take 60 votes to sustain it. I think the Constitution assures a majority can pass any amendment.”