Thomas Daschle: “I am quite confident that if all we had to do was to consider the bill, after only a short period of time for debate and…”

“I am quite confident that if all we had to do was to consider the bill, after only a short period of time for debate and adoption of a managers' amendment to clarify some technical questions with the bill, we would then be in a position to vote, I would suspect unanimously, for that particular legislation. The dilemma is that the bill will very likely be used as the vehicle for another very big debate, unlimited debate, over the whole issue of comprehensive regulatory reform. That issue has been before the Senate for weeks already during this Congress. Several attempts to invoke cloture were made and failed. We could thus find ourselves in much the same set of circumstances again next week were comprehensive regulatory reform legislation offered as an amendment to this bill. My concern is that the Senate has many important and timely issues facing it.”