Trent Lott: “I know he could talk at great length on this and other subjects, and there may be other Senators who would like to talk…”

“I know he could talk at great length on this and other subjects, and there may be other Senators who would like to talk on them who are not here today. Quite frankly, I am not impressed that they are not here. We are in the final 2 or 3 weeks of the session, and when Senators say they can't be here on Monday and they can't be here on Friday, it sure makes it awful hard to do the people's business. But the Senator is within his right; certainly these are important nominees, but I believe that on these nominees as well as the FCC nominees and hopefully maybe even others, if the holds are continued on them, I need to call them up. If there is objection, as apparently the Senator from Iowa intends, I just want to make it clear why they are being objected to and who is objecting to them and we will move on. But I do want to make it clear to one and all that in view of the lateness of the hour in the session, the odds of being able to spend a great deal of time or to get these nominees called up again is not very likely because we have a number of urgent matters that are pending that we are going to have to take up this week and next week. And so I just wanted to put that on the Record so that the Senators here will know this is probably not a temporary delay; this is probably a delay until next year.”