Thomas Daschle: “The assistant Democratic leader is correct. That is a succinct summary of what we did. We voted to ensure there be…”

“The assistant Democratic leader is correct. That is a succinct summary of what we did. We voted to ensure there be country- of-origin labeling, like 43 other countries have in the world today, knowing we will not be able to export our product to Japan unless it is labeled. We did that. When we found out the administration actually wanted to eliminate overtime, we said we are going to prohibit that. As the distinguished assistant Democratic leader's question suggests, the administration--over the objections, I would say, of the Presiding Officer and others on both sides of the aisle from the Senate--insisted that be part of the appropriations process and this omnibus bill. There is a third issue, and that is media concentration. Many of us are deeply concerned about concentration of media ownership, and for good reason. We have seen far too many examples already of what pressure is brought to bear at the local and even at the national level as a result of the power of ownership in media today. I must say, it gets worse and worse with each passing year. What we said is there ought to be a threshold on ownership of no more than 35 percent. That was a position taken on a rollcall vote here in the Senate. Incredibly, it was a position taken on a rollcall vote in the House of Representatives. Yet what does this omnibus bill do? This bill overrides both the vote taken in the House and the vote taken in the Senate.…”