Arlen Specter: “I begin by expressing my appreciation to the Senator from Massachusetts for the kind things he has had to say about the…”

“I begin by expressing my appreciation to the Senator from Massachusetts for the kind things he has had to say about the so-called Specter bill, the committee bill. But we can't move forward on legislating with that bill until there is an opportunity for Members of the Senate to offer amendments. We do not have a system where a Senator, even Arlen Specter, offers a bill and it becomes the will of the Senate, it is passed by the Senate without having Senators having an opportunity to offer amendments. It appears now late on Tuesday afternoon, almost 4 o'clock, that there is a calculated effort by some not to permit this bill to go forward. We started on this bill on Wednesday afternoon, but we couldn't vote on Thursday until we had sort of a bed check vote. That means one which was going to be unanimous but not a meaningful incursion into the tough issues to try to start to work the will of the Senate. We had a vote at 3 o'clock on Thursday afternoon, but all day Thursday, most of the day, was consumed by debate and not very pointed debate, fairly generalized debate which didn't advance the legislative process very much at all. Then on Friday, the Senate was in session, but nobody was around. We couldn't offer amendments because the other side of the aisle, the Democrats, wouldn't permit us to. Then yesterday we structured a couple of amendments on which there was really no objection and voted on them pretty much pro forma.…”