Arlen Specter: “When Senator Biden and Senator Lugar decided not to offer that amendment, I decided to offer it myself. I was surprised…”

“When Senator Biden and Senator Lugar decided not to offer that amendment, I decided to offer it myself. I was surprised that the Biden-Lugar amendment was not offered before 1 o'clock yesterday, which was the deadline. I worked with the Parliamentarian to structure a procedure to offer this as a second-degree amendment, and for reasons which were detailed in an earlier speech on the Senate floor, a unanimous consent agreement, in my absence, was entered into, and the pending first-degree amendments, to which this would have been amended, were withdrawn. I do not want to get too much into the arcane details of our Senate procedure, but I was foreclosed from offering that amendment, and I think it is very unfortunate the Senate did not have an opportunity to consider the Biden-Lugar amendment. I am not sanguine to say it would have been enacted, but, on a matter of this importance, I felt very strongly that procedural rules should not bar the Senate from consideration, especially when those procedural rules had been complied with until, as I say, the unanimous consent agreement, in my absence, in effect, pulled the rug out from under me. I am concerned that the scope of the present resolution goes a little far in authorizing the President to use 'all means that he determines to be appropriate,' which is a subjective test, contrasted with the 1991 authorization which said the President was authorized to use force in order to implement Security Council resolutions.”