On the recordJune 6, 2018
let me just share what just happened here. I have been involved with this for a long time, including over in the House when we had our NDAA. Now, I am fully aware and everybody here knows that we have passed this NDAA for 57 consecutive years, and we are going to pass it. But one of the things I really don't like about the procedure is that one person--any one person, Democrat or Republican--can object, as this was just objected to, and cause us to have to file cloture. This is going to put this off for a period of time, and two undesirable results can result. One result can be that it can ultimately deny Members from offering their amendments, whether they are germane or not. I will state how much I appreciate the fact that Senator Reed and I in our committee have worked very closely together, and we made a decision that we want to have an open amendment process. We had discussion of this in our committee and everyone agrees with this. This could have the effect of ultimately closing the door to everyone who has an amendment. We don't want that, but we did everything we could to stop an objection from taking place so that we could at least move on to the bill. We need to get on the bill, and then we can try to do all kinds of arrangements.…
