Kent Conrad: “Look, we obviously are not going to do that, take advantage of this situation. But I must say, I am tempted after days…”

“Look, we obviously are not going to do that, take advantage of this situation. But I must say, I am tempted after days and days of not being able to consider amendments on the farm bill that is critically important to this Nation's economy. We got the bill through the Agriculture Committee without a single dissenting vote. Twenty-one members of the Senate serve on the Senate Agriculture Committee. That is over one-fifth of the Senate. After months of difficult negotiations we reached conclusion. Now we are in this circumstance in which people want to offer amendments on everything from the Exxon Valdez to medical malpractice to immigration to labor issues to a whole series of things that have nothing to do with the farm bill. Now, we all understand that very often hundreds of amendments are filed on major bills that Senators have no intention of actually offering. Certainly, we know there are hundreds of amendments filed on this bill. But I say to my colleagues, this has now gone on for 10 days. We have not considered one amendment. We have not considered a single amendment. At some point, one would hope there would be an accommodation. Typically, in a situation like this, the accommodation is that a certain number of amendments are offered by each side. That list is agreed to, entered into the Record, and votes are held. Typically on a farm bill there are about 20 amendments voted on, 20, 22, 24. We could have been done with this bill by now.…”