Harry Reid: “I say briefly to my friend from Idaho, the Senator answered his own question--certainly mine. There is a lot to do on…”

“I say briefly to my friend from Idaho, the Senator answered his own question--certainly mine. There is a lot to do on this bill. I acknowledge that. But we completed our last vote before 11 o'clock today. For the last hour, we have basically listened to people talking about the stimulus bill and the antiballistic missile treaty. The reason they have been talking about those things is there is nothing happening on the farm bill. If we have these important issues--for example, everyone is familiar with the Cochran-Roberts legislation--let's get them here and get them voted on. I am happy to see my friend from New Hampshire here. The distinguished Senator has always had a real issue with how sugar is handled. Good, he is here. Let's debate this and vote on it. I hope, with other matters raised by the Senator from Idaho, people will come forward and do that, that we not have a slow walking of these amendments. We are not trying to rush anyone into anything. But we are saying when there is downtime here when people are not doing anything relating to the farm bill, it is not helping the cause. That is why I think no matter how many amendments there are, there should be a time for filing those amendments. We are arriving at a point where I am going to ask consent to have a finite list of amendments, and we are going to see if they will agree to have a cut-off time for filing amendments. If that is not the case, then other action will have to be taken.”