Byron Dorgan: “last Thursday and early Friday morning, the Senate was in session for I believe 17 hours, and it took 36 rollcall votes.…”

“last Thursday and early Friday morning, the Senate was in session for I believe 17 hours, and it took 36 rollcall votes. Many of us arrived at our homes at 1:30 or 2 in the morning. I had trouble sleeping despite the hour because of what happened on that day. I want to describe something that has bothered me all weekend. In the middle of discussing the tax vote that came to us from the Finance Committee, the majority leader brought up the global AIDS bill. I guess it was about 10 o'clock at night. Those of us who prepared to offer amendments were told by the majority leader twice on the floor of the Senate that we would be able to offer our amendments and they would defeat them. Understand that this is a global AIDS bill that was done in committee, and none of us who do not serve on that committee had an opportunity to deal with that subject. Yet we were told in the Senate we would be able to offer our amendments and they would defeat them. This was about 10 o'clock at night. We were, by the way, at that moment debating a $430 billion or $450 billion tax cut. And I proposed an amendment to the global AIDS bill to spend $250 million--one-fourth of a billion dollars--to address a famine, particularly in central and sub-Saharan Africa, that threatens 11 million people. But before we had a debate about the substance of that, we were told: Your amendments will be defeated. Why? Because they are not a priority.…”