Thomas Daschle: “let me just respond to a couple points made by the distinguished majority leader. First of all, I only wish I had had…”

“let me just respond to a couple points made by the distinguished majority leader. First of all, I only wish I had had his text in front of me when we took up the Coverdell bill, when we took up a number of other pieces of legislation earlier this year, because I can recall his passionate determination to get time agreements, to stack votes, to find a way to come to closure in a matter of a couple of days, a couple of days, and were it not for the fact that we had the votes to hold off on cloture, I don't know where that would have gone. We finally came to a resolution on the Coverdell legislation because we were able to come to some agreement on how we would proceed on amendments. Now, I am perfectly willing to ask unanimous consent to withdraw the cloture motion if we can get an agreement on the process and some time agreements by which we can have these amendments considered. Now, I don't know why, but I have been told--and I will admit I haven't talked directly to the majority leader--that the Republicans are refusing to allow the Democratic tax amendment to either precede or immediately succeed the consideration of the Gramm amendment. They don't want them back to back. I don't know why. And if that is not accurate, I hope somebody will tell me. We have offered to have a limited amount of debate on the Gramm amendment, a limited amount of time on the Democratic amendment, and then let's have two votes back to back. We can do that this afternoon.…”