On the recordJuly 22, 2020
first of all, can I say Senator Reed has been incredibly great in this whole process. We have been working on this for a whole year now, and we are now to the point where tomorrow we should be able to pass it out of--it will not be passed at that time. We also have a conference we are going to have to be faced with and all that, but today and tomorrow morning are very important to us. The point that is made by Senator Reed--if you add up all the amendments, really, it is you guys in the Senate who have drafted this bill. Not only are there 141 amendments since we came out of the committee, but in the committee, we had over 800 amendments that were part of the bill to start with. One of the reasons--and I think I speak for Senator Reed and myself at the same time. We have had some experiences in the past where, since the Senate operates with unanimous consent, we were unable to have any amendments at all on the floor. So in order to do that, to make sure-- if that should happen again, we wanted to make sure we had all these amendments already in the bill. So that was our starting point. Now, here is where we are today. We had a great vote on the NDAA, receiving an 87-to-13 vote in favor of ending debate on the substitute. That was great. That was today. That means we are at kind of the end of this process now. We have continued to work on another managers' package.…
