Pete Domenici: “let me state in the presence of the majority leader that nobody is more interested in getting the bill completed than…”

“let me state in the presence of the majority leader that nobody is more interested in getting the bill completed than the Senator from New Mexico. I remember one year when this bill was vetoed over an amendment that was debated in this Chamber. The distinguished majority leader remembers that. It was a pretty onerous situation to veto an entire bill over the Missouri River. We have not been on this bill very long because if you want to recall with me, what happened is you carved out big pieces of time for other things during each of the days that this bill has been up, so that on Monday we had a little time but no votes; Tuesday, yesterday, we didn't start on this bill until after noon, and this morning we finished our memorials and started at 11 o'clock. So while it may seem that we were here the whole time, we have not been on the bill that whole time. This would be a very short number of hours. Nonetheless, I will work with our Members, and I don't think anybody is intending to delay matters. We just put them off when, in fact, we have long lists, wondering who is going first. There are not a lot of amendments that people say they want to vote on. There are a lot of amendments that are going to be either in the managers' amendment or are not going to be taken care of. Senators know that. I will try to get two or three more lined up if we can proceed with this one now. I yield the floor.”