What we are trying to do is follow what has been the history in the Senate. At various points in the Senate, there has been respect for each other, the ability to get legislation on the floor, to have debate. With the rules, it is pretty…

it's unfortunate in a sense that we didn't get our wide ranging energy bill out of the committee

if we had a lot of these protocols in place then we probably wouldn't have had to have a moratorium after this spill

one of the big issues that can help us function better is if we just agree, whether we are in the majority or in the minority, that we want both sides to have the opportunity to debate and to offer amendments. And so we are trying to…

The Senator from Oregon has raised the issue of what we have going on right now is what we call a silent debate. It is a silent filibuster. We have people who say they want to filibuster and object, but then they go home or they go on…

Then it is transparent, then if you as a Senator on the Klamath Basin want to do something, you can go to that Senator--whoever it is--and say: I have an issue with my State. Can we work together to try to work it out? Right now the…

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…

He was talking about the idea that one Senate could establish a set of rules and bind future Senates. He gave a passionate speech. We are in the situation that he talked about right now. He said, now we are at the beginning of Congress…

I say to Senator Harkin, one of the things that happened to us right at the end of the Congress was when we had a vote on a piece of legislation called the DREAM Act. I believe the majority had 55 votes for the DREAM Act.

One of the things that happens--and we have seen a lot of this--we know some Senator is objecting, for example, to a nomination, a high nomination in an executive department and does it secretly so we do not know on the Senate floor, the…

So what we are doing today--and I know Senator Merkley has introduced a freestanding proposal on the talking filibuster, and we have joined together; I have also signed on to that--we have S. Res. 10, filed on January 5, which has the five…

Now there is no doubt the Senate has been reduced to a shadow of itself as the world's greatest deliberative body, a place which, as Sen. Arlen Specter said in his farewell address, has been distinctive because of "the ability of any…