William Ford: “the Senator from Illinois, my distinguished friend, is accusing me as a cosponsor of the Reid amendment as being a…”

“the Senator from Illinois, my distinguished friend, is accusing me as a cosponsor of the Reid amendment as being a stalking horse. I assure him that I am not. I intend to get every vote for that resolution that I possibly can. So I do not care what is read in the paper or what you read into the Record. I want my personal record to be there that I am not giving you or anybody else cover to vote for this amendment. If you want to vote for the amendment, which I think is better than yours--and I am not shopping it to see if I can get something on it to get a few more votes. I just want to clear the record, Mr. President, regardless of what you read in the newspaper--we just heard our distinguished President pro tempore fuss a little bit about the news this morning. I just wanted everybody to know this is not a cover for everybody. This is a legitimate resolution that is put forward for my colleagues to consider. If they like it better than the Simon resolution, well and good. If they do not, we will just take our chances. But I am not a cover for anybody here to vote for this resolution by Senator Reid, myself and Senator Feinstein and Senator Conrad, to give them cover so they will not have to vote for the Simon resolution.”