Bob Kerrey: “I echo what the majority leader said. There are many evenings where we arrive here at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and…”

“I echo what the majority leader said. There are many evenings where we arrive here at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and then we start to do the sorts of things that we could have done at 5 o'clock in the evening. We know what needs to be done. We have put out contacts to offices. There are many amendments that we are prepared to accept, but we need Members to come to the floor and offer the amendments up or notify us if they are willing to take the amendments down. Otherwise we will be here until 2, 3, or 4 o'clock in the morning. We could wrap this thing up quickly. The substantive disagreements, at least on the bill itself, have all been taken care of. We have some disagreements on some amendments we are working on right now that we think we can work out, as well as getting a managers' amendment to wrap this up. I hope those who would like to get out of here at a relatively nice hour tonight, or those who desire not to have votes tomorrow, will get down here as quickly as they can. Both Senator Shelby and I are willing to work with Members to see whatever reasonable differences there are and we will work them out.”