Thomas Daschle: “I have come to the floor now on several occasions to talk about the concern I have with regard to the schedule for the…”

“I have come to the floor now on several occasions to talk about the concern I have with regard to the schedule for the consideration of energy. We have a mere 3 or 4 days left before the August recess is supposed to begin. As we debated the Energy bill last year, I can recall so vividly how frustrated many of us were with the length of time it took to work through the many very controversial issues. Energy is controversial. At the end of the day, we, in spite of our frustration, passed a bill that ultimately acquired 88 votes. The vote was 88 to 11. Because we were persistent and because we stayed on the legislation, we were able to complete our work and ultimately get a strong bipartisan vote--88 votes. That vote came after 24 days of debate, over the course of 8 weeks. We considered 144 amendments. At the end of that period of time, people felt as if they had their say. They had been able to offer their amendments. They expressed themselves and ultimately voted for the bill by an overwhelming margin. Unfortunately, so far, we have not been able to allow the Senate to work its will in that way with the pending energy legislation. We have been on it 12 days. We have only had 12 rollcall votes. So we have averaged one rollcall vote per day. We have considered 35 amendments, but, as I say, only 12 of those actually required rollcall votes.”