Ron Wyden: “What the minority whip has essentially said is: We have what amounts to a permanent campaign. You have the election the…”

“What the minority whip has essentially said is: We have what amounts to a permanent campaign. You have the election the first Tuesday in November; people sleep in on Wednesday; and then the whole thing starts all over again on Thursday. It is time, in effect, to turn off this treadmill and, heaven forbid, come to the floor and talk about issues, such as prescription drugs, which I have tried to focus on for a number of months now. Many of our colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, want to talk about that, and the Patients' Bill of Rights, and education. To the extent that campaign finance dominates so much of the American political focus, it detracts from those issues. I commend the minority whip. I thank him for his excellent presentation.”