Haley Stevens: “I want to be as constrained as possible on this concept, but I do want to talk about this amendment of Senator Reid's.…”

“I want to be as constrained as possible on this concept, but I do want to talk about this amendment of Senator Reid's. It is a 500-plus-page amendment to be added to our port security bill, and most of the provisions are totally unrelated to port security. It covers Iraq policy; intelligence reform; all of the 9/11 Commission reforms; troop redeployment concepts; Iraqi contractor provisions; a section regarding detainees, such as those people at Guantanamo Bay; immigration and border security; and a whole section on transportation. Now, I do not know if the Senate realizes, but the port security bill that our committee, the Commerce Committee, reported was originally Senator Inouye's bill. As a matter of fact, we took it and reviewed it and made some minor modifications to it, and Senator Inouye suggested that my name go first since I was chairman. We are cochairmen of the committee. As a matter of fact, it was the Inouye, Stevens, Collins, Lieberman, Grassley, Baucus, Coleman, Murray amendment that we were talking about when we finally got to the floor and put everything together. We worked on trying to make this bill before the Senate a bipartisan bill, and what does my good friend--he is my good friend--the Democratic leader, do? He brings us a bill, 500 pages, totally partisan. There is no bipartisanship in that bill at all. In each instance, it is the minority's position on these very controversial subjects.…”