Harry Reid: “I just hope that my friends on the other side of the aisle--and there isn't a single Senator over there I don't consider…”

“I just hope that my friends on the other side of the aisle--and there isn't a single Senator over there I don't consider a friend and have great respect for--I hope they remember this exchange between the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the majority leader today, as we wind down this session of this Congress. I want them to remember this because you don't have to have a very long memory to understand what has happened in the Senate with our inability to offer amendments. The most recent that I can think of, of course, was the Dubai Ports situation on lobbying. The next thing I can go back and look at is the PATRIOT Act, where the distinguished majority leader filled the tree. There is no need--we went through this yesterday. There is no need to do this. But the Senate, in the 200-plus years it has been in existence--even though the rules are somewhat difficult to accept, they are here. And they are here for a reason. Because over the generations of the Senate, there is always the ability to have an endgame. There is a way to proceed orderly on a piece of legislation. And what we should do on this, if everyone is so upset with what is taking place here, is in the morning we will have an opportunity to invoke cloture. All germane amendments will be allowed, if they were filed before 1 o'clock today. There would be an opportunity then to debate these amendments and vote on them. So there is no more orderly way to proceed to a matter than cloture.…”