Don Nickles: “Another thing that galls this Senator is if and when the President thinks he can legislate by radio address. The…”

“Another thing that galls this Senator is if and when the President thinks he can legislate by radio address. The President is the Chief Executive Officer in the country, but under the Constitution he does not have legislative powers to legislate by Executive order or to legislate by radio address. I think, frankly, he crossed that line again on Saturday. That is unfortunate. If he wants legislation, we are willing to consider legislation. The President talked about having internal appeals and so on. We have internal appeals in our bill. We have external appeals in our bill. So if the President likes that provision, he can take it up. And he should urge our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle to take this legislation up and pass it. We are giving a reasonable unanimous consent request to bring it up. So I just hope that, again, common sense would prevail and that we would take the legislation up under a reasonable time limit. I mention that the counteroffer that we received in July was not three amendments a side; it was 20 amendments a side. That would be 40 amendments. That is ridiculous. That is not going to happen. I want to pass this legislation. Frankly, I have invested a lot of time in this legislation, as well as Senator Frist and Senator Collins, Senator Jeffords, Senator Gramm--many of our colleagues--Senator Santorum. We worked for months on this legislation.”