Harry Reid: “the Democratic leader has asked me to announce that he has joined with the majority leader in recognizing this bill…”

“the Democratic leader has asked me to announce that he has joined with the majority leader in recognizing this bill needs to be finished tonight. As the majority leader has indicated, following this bill, we are going to complete the global HIV/AIDS bill, which has a number of amendments we will have to dispose of. Right now I have here about 14 amendments. There are a couple on the other side. The rest of them are on this side. We know how strongly people feel about their issues, but I would like to say Senator Dorgan and I have been waiting for a long time to offer an amendment on concurrent receipts. We are not going to offer that amendment tonight because we have an opportunity to offer that at a later time on another piece of legislation. When the defense bill comes through here--both the defense bill and the defense appropriations bill--we can do that. I know I will find another place at a later time to offer the notch-baby amendment. I feel strongly about both of these issues, but I had one amendment yesterday. It was a good debate. I would hope that people who have the opportunity to offer an amendment--and we recognize that--would look to see if we have debated these issues before. We have voted on some issues several times already, and if they must offer an amendment, maybe we could dispose of it by voice vote.”