Don Nickles: “I compliment my colleague. I am disappointed in the minority leader's statement, and also its tone. A lot of us came…”

“I compliment my colleague. I am disappointed in the minority leader's statement, and also its tone. A lot of us came back from the one-week break for the Fourth of July and said we have work to do, we have appropriations bills to pass, we have product liability reform bill to pass, we have the IRS reform bill. And then somebody says this is an unbelievable procedure. No, it is not. We are moving to a conference report. That has priority under the rules of the Senate. We are moving to a conference report on a bill that already passed the House and the Senate, and, hopefully, the President will sign it. I think it may be one of the most notable and significant achievements of this Congress. Then our colleagues say, wait a minute, you are denying us an opportunity to offer an amendment. I disagree. The Senator from Arkansas had an amendment on the space station that lasted most of the afternoon. We were clearly willing to take amendments. We had an amendment that Senator Kohl from Wisconsin and I were going to offer dealing with FHA. That was bipartisan. We were trying to do the Senate's work. As a matter of fact, the Senate was planning on staying on the VA appropriations bill so we could finish tonight, tomorrow, or the next day, to do our work. The minority leader tried to place an amendment--or did file an amendment called the Patients' Bill of Rights on the appropriations bill. He has a right to do so, but he knows it is not the time or place to do it.”