Thomas Daschle: “I appreciate this colloquy. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota did everything within his power to reach the…”

“I appreciate this colloquy. The distinguished Senator from North Dakota did everything within his power to reach the bipartisan consensus required to achieve a budget last year. I give him great credit for the efforts he made, in so many ways, to reach across the aisle, to find that bipartisan consensus throughout the year. Unfortunately, we had very little response or help. When we came to the conclusion, finally, that perhaps the best thing to do would be to move a 2-year budget resolution, as he correctly noted, we did get a bipartisan consensus on that but not enough to reach the 60 votes. Unfortunately, had the Senator from Pennsylvania chosen to support that resolution, we would have had the necessary 60 votes and hopefully worked out the remaining differences with our House colleagues in spite of the chasm that existed between their proposal and ours. I appreciate very much the clarification made by the Senator from North Dakota.”