Byron Dorgan

We have had a filibuster day after day after day. We have had two unsuccessful votes to try to break it. Almost everyone on your side of the aisle has voted to continue the filibuster. You are now offering your amendment. We say go ahead…

I so appreciate the generosity here. Let me ask the Senator from Arkansas a question. He says this is the last opportunity for a farm bill, this amendment he is offering. Is it not the case we will have a cloture vote following that and…

That is a judgment I don't share. The Senator has, in fact, voted for cloture. Almost all of his colleagues on that side of the aisle have not. We have decided today to allow the Senator from Arkansas to offer his amendment, which is…

Let me make one final point. We have been stuck in reverse with respect to policy for decades. The Senate has spoken on this issue; 70 Senators said using food and medicine as a weapon is absurd. Let's change the policy. So we are going to…

It is actually interesting that the Senator from New Jersey seems to be well aware of that about which you are inquiring. The Senator indicated he is well informed and, observing that, I would concur. All I am interested in doing is to see…

Is it not the case that in the other area--we have nutrition, conservation, and then commodities--area, commodities, which is the support basically for that which the family farm is producing, that is the area where we need the help? The…

The farm bill comes from the Senate Agriculture Committee, and in both areas of nutrition and conservation at a very substantial increase over present funding and over the funding of this proposal in the bill offered by the House of…

Is it not the case that the piece of legislation that the Senator from Iowa brought to the floor of the Senate in both conservation and nutrition substantially improves what was written in the bill approved by the House of Representatives?

Isn't it the case the bill at the desk is a House bill which was passed by the House on a clearly partisan 216 to 214 vote. In fact the bill out of the Senate Finance Committee is not at the desk, but a point of order was made against it…

I know how strongly the majority leader feels about the need to write a farm bill. This is about family farmers hanging on by their financial fingertips and struggling to survive. It is our obligation to get this done. I know it is not the…

Is it not the case that some of those same folks who say we can't afford to have homeland security spending in the stimulus package believe that we can afford retroactive tax cuts going back to the 1980s to provide up to $1 billion in…

I ask the majority leader, is it not the case that the stimulus bill was brought to the floor of the Senate by action of the majority leader and that it was subsequently taken off the floor by a vote of those who now inquire of its…

I agree with his interpretation that the requirement of State administration of sales and use taxes applies only to remote sales. While I believe that this is the intent of the current wording, I will work in conference to assure that this…

I was actually using that term to describe something done on a tax bill in the other body. I described it as ``larding up.'' It is plugging the arteries of this system by putting in place certain provisions. I will give you an example.

All I really care about--going back to the issue of aviation security--is that we get the job done. The one thing that is clear to me is companies that have been fined for defrauding the Government--in effect, companies that have been put…

My interest is in making sure we have the passenger lists of people coming into this country. As I indicated, in 85 percent of the cases we do, but we do not now from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and so on. It seems to me that security…

I have said for several years it is morally wrong, in my judgment, for us to use food and medicine as a weapon. It is not right for us to use food and medicine as part of an embargo. It doesn't injure Fidel Castro. He has never missed a…

I am not someone who supports taxing access to the Internet. As far as I am concerned, we can extend the prohibition on that forever. I also do not support punitive and discriminatory taxation with respect to Internet sales. So we have no…

We will, in my judgment, extend the moratorium. When we do that, I will be willing to join him in extending it retroactively until October 22, 2001, to say to State and local governments: Beware, if you are thinking of messing around with…

We, of course, have a disagreement with a distinguished colleague of ours who offers a farm bill that really is not much of a farm bill at all and certainly offers no hope to family farmers. But isn't the origin of this idea coming from…

No, I say in response to Senator Reid, most people are concerned at this moment about the Senate moving very quickly with some urgency to deal with situations such as aviation security, to deal with the issues of national security and…

In fact, our colleague from Idaho is on the Appropriations Committee. The first thing you have to do is appropriate the money for the agencies--the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, all the law enforcement functions--and then all…

The objections have nothing to do with appropriations. The objections, as I understand it--there are several different objections to different bills around here; it is one of those pick- your-flavor objections to people who professionally…

Have a record vote and strip it out. As I understand the circumstances, those with whom the Senator disagrees at this point, they are content just preventing the Senator from considering this bill because they do not want to have a vote…

It is inexplicable that in a time of national emergency--and it is that, not just with respect to national security issues but also with respect to this economy--it is inexplicable that there is, among some, business as usual in the…