Byron Dorgan: “In the end, it does not matter what is said one way or the other about who is at fault for this or for delaying that.…”

“In the end, it does not matter what is said one way or the other about who is at fault for this or for delaying that. The question people ask at the end of a legislative session is, Are things a little better in this country because those folks met and discussed things in the United States, what works, what does not, what we can do and cannot do? If the answer to that is yes, none of this matters much. This is a calendar which shows this year, the year 2000. The red days on this calendar are the days the Senate was not in session. We will see the Senate was not in session a fair part of the year. In fact, another chart will show the number of days we have been in session. It is now the end of September, and we have been in session 115 days out of all of this year. Of those 115 days we were in session, on 34 of them, there were no votes at all.”