Thad Cochran: “This is a smoke-and-mirrors amendment, Mr. President, purely and simply. You cannot have it both ways. As I remember…”

“This is a smoke-and-mirrors amendment, Mr. President, purely and simply. You cannot have it both ways. As I remember, one of my good friends on the other side, after looking at a proposal that we had before us one time, said: This is like smoke and mirrors. In fact, there is so much smoke; you can't even find the mirrors; you can't see the mirrors. I am not trying to be too cute. I don't want to try to create that impression, but I am very serious in my suggestion that it would be a big mistake if we adopted this amendment. I hope the Senate will reject the amendment. The committee looked very carefully at the amendment when it was offered in our markup session and rejected the amendment.”