Tom Udall: “Senator Merkley hit it on the head. That is a problem, and we have had that consistently in the 2 years that he and I…”

“Senator Merkley hit it on the head. That is a problem, and we have had that consistently in the 2 years that he and I have been here. My understanding is, it happened in many of the years before that time. In fact, Senator Byrd was very upset about the way the motion to proceed was being used. In 1979, he came down to the floor--he was the majority leader--and he did everything he could to change the motion to proceed and try to make sure it was used more rationally and more reasonably. What our proposal is, I say to Senator Merkley, and other Senators on this resolution know, we are talking 2 hours of debate on the motion to proceed. Rather than wasting a week, if Majority Leader Reid comes down and says we are going to proceed to legislation about jobs and he puts it on the floor, the side over there gets an hour and our side gets an hour and then we are on the legislation, ready to have amendments filed, ready for debate to take place. We have saved us what we believe would be 1 week of time. That is dealing with the first proposal on the motion to proceed. The second proposal is very simple, but it is going to move the Senate along in a dramatic way; that is, section 2, eliminating secret holds.”