Chuck Schumer: “I make a counterproposal to my colleague. Either we have him come back for 1 day, and the administration, his nominator…”

“I make a counterproposal to my colleague. Either we have him come back for 1 day, and the administration, his nominator, releases the papers as Senator Daschle and Senator Leahy have asked, and we agree to a vote ahead of time; the papers and a day of hearings--again, I can only speak for myself that that would satisfy me--or, in an effort to break the deadlock, we have the day of hearings without any commitment. Because, in all candor--you know, the Senator from Utah is a very fine lawyer and probably a lot better than I am. But I am not going to give away the store for a pig in a poke. If we were to agree to a vote right now and Miguel Estrada were to come before us and just verbatim give the exact same answers he gave before, we would not have accomplished anything. So I say to my colleague, in an effort to break the deadlock which we all want to break, believe me, let us have Mr. Estrada come back for a day of hearings, no preconditions. There will be lots more people paying attention to those hearings now. And let the American people make a judgment as to whether he is being forthcoming or not. Maybe his answers will change and they will say he is. Then we will decide where we go from there. Because I will say this: This is one place I disagree with what my colleague said. To say, poor Mr. Estrada, he sat through 9 hours of hearings and to ask him to do it again is not fair seems to me to be-- we are lawyers. Probably right now Mr…”