Jack Reed: “Reclaiming my time, again, I appreciate the Senator's comments with respect to the amendment, but once again I think we…”

“Reclaiming my time, again, I appreciate the Senator's comments with respect to the amendment, but once again I think we provided you the opportunity to look at the amendment. There are several issues here. The first issue is whether you think it would be appropriate to support and vote for it, which presumptively comes after debate. But the first issue is allowing us to offer the amendment. You might very well object to the substance of the amendment. You might very well urge our colleagues to reject it. I respect that. But the right to deny the amendment since you object goes against what the majority leader said in how we conduct this debate. I will make a few comments now in general and I hope perhaps during the course of my comments the review of the amendment would allow us to formally offer it. Again, there have been some comments about these junk lawsuits. These comments might have some resonance in this Chamber, but I doubt if we were talking to the widow of Conrad Johnson we would have the temerity to say the suit she filed on behalf of the family was a junk lawsuit. Or if you had a working man, someone sitting in his bus seat in the early morning having a cup of coffee and reading the paper--and when I read about that, it reminded me of what my father did every day as a school custodian.…”