Ron Wyden: “by way of responding to the distinguished Chair, the Senator is not asking for special treatment. What we do in the…”

“by way of responding to the distinguished Chair, the Senator is not asking for special treatment. What we do in the Senate again and again--it is the common practice, something that goes on every week--is we have debates on amendments and then Senators have those amendments put into a group, and when there has been a group of amendments put together and all Senators on both sides of the aisle have been notified that there will be votes, then there are votes. That is all that I have asked for. There is no request for a specific time. Do it at 1, 2, 3. Do it whenever we have a block of amendments so we can get on and hear from Senator Cornyn and Senator Salazar, and I now see the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Pennsylvania here as well. I don't understand why we can't get a commitment that at some point-- what goes on here regularly, that Senators get votes as a group of amendments is considered--that be done. I come back to the point, having had now considerable amount of discussion, that not one Senator has said they want to defend the oil royalty relief in its current form. I think that is incredible. I certainly expected some opposition. I was pleased when Senator Kyl and Senator Lieberman said they wanted to be cosponsors. I expected people to come on over here and oppose it. And I think the reason there is no vocal opposition to this program is exactly what we saw in the energy conference committee last year.…”