On the recordApril 27, 2016
I would like to compliment my colleague from Illinois. He hit the nail on the head. I will be brief. The Republican leader said this is a new level of obstruction. I don't know if it is a new level of obstruction; he has been pretty good at it over the years. But certainly, if we wanted to obstruct these bills, we wouldn't have let the motion to proceed go forward. We would have done 17 other things that were done time and time again in the past. The way to stop this, I would say to the Republican leader, is very simple: Either prevail on Senator Cotton not to offer his amendment--no one is doing that. He has a right to do it. But in the old days, as Senator Durbin said, the way the appropriations process worked, the chair of the subcommittee would say: Don't offer your amendment because it will be defeated and we will help defeat it because it will blow up the bill. Plain and simple. That is still an option. We didn't offer the Cotton amendment. We could have offered our version of Cotton amendments to blow up this bill. We did not. Whether or not that was his intent--and I will not doubt the sincerity of my friend from Arkansas. But it was offered by the other side, and the onus is on the other side to fix this.…
