Kent Conrad: “perhaps I can help put this in perspective. We have 110 amendments pending, with more amendments coming in every hour.…”

“perhaps I can help put this in perspective. We have 110 amendments pending, with more amendments coming in every hour. We have just been called and asked to draft six more amendments in the last hour. I hope people understand where this is headed. If we are going to have 16-minute votes and we are going to vote on another 110 amendments, we are going to be here until noon on Saturday. That is where this is all headed. If we don't start getting cooperation from Members here to not offer amendments which they could offer somewhere else, and if we don't get some cooperation from Members on having votes that really last 10 minutes, I assure you we are going to be here all day Friday--first of all, late tomorrow night, we are going to be here all day Friday, we are going to be here late Friday night, and we are going to be here at noon on Saturday. Colleagues can choose. It is out of our control. We don't control this. Colleagues can decide whether we are going to have some reasonable outcome here or whether we will be here until Saturday noon. Amendment No. 3054 The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 2 minutes equally divided prior to the vote on the Menendez amendment. The Senator from New Jersey.”