Thomas Daschle: “I have done everything to encourage Senators to come to the floor to offer their amendments. For some reason, we have…”

“I have done everything to encourage Senators to come to the floor to offer their amendments. For some reason, we have gotten into this habit of thinking any amendment offered after 6 in the evening is not really considered prime time, or it is not considered to be a legitimate time to offer an amendment. Fridays and Mondays are considered, for some reason, not equal in quality to Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday as times to offer amendments. We have to break out of that mind set. We have done everything to petition Senators to come to the floor today to offer amendments. Those Senators who now express some concern they are going to be precluded from offering amendments--when they passed up the opportunity on Friday, they passed up the opportunity to offer amendments later in the evening, they passed up the opportunity to come here on Monday--are not going to get much sympathy. I am very sympathetic to many of the substantive questions raised by Senators with their amendments, but procedurally, if they are concerned about it, they ought to be here.”