Don Nickles: “I wish to respond to my colleague, first to say I very much regret our colleague from Massachusetts is bringing this…”

“I wish to respond to my colleague, first to say I very much regret our colleague from Massachusetts is bringing this amendment to the DOD authorization bill. I heard the minority leader say we want to pass the DOD bill, but there is certainly no evidence of that when you introduce this bill, totally extraneous to DOD, campaign finance, and other unrelated matters. It appears as if defense doesn't matter. We have an unaccomplished agenda. Have we voted on these matters before? Yes, we have. Senator Kennedy is basically saying let's pass the House-passed bill. We are now in conference. I am somewhat resentful of some of the statements that were made by our colleagues. They said the conference was a charade. Tell that to the members of the conference who have worked, Members and staff, over 400 hours this year--probably more time spent in this conference than any other conference, maybe, in years. They said there is intransigence on the part of the Republicans. Not so. Republicans have made significant compromises and adjustments in willingness to try to see if we cannot close the gap on two extremely different bills. The House passed a bill called the Norwood-Dingell bill. Now we have Senator Kennedy saying, we don't care what is going on in the conference, let's just pass the House bill. He tried to pass it before in the Senate. It was not successful. I doubt he will be successful today.”