Thomas Daschle: “What I hope most people will recognize is that while we have been on it 10 days, our Republican colleagues have refused…”

“What I hope most people will recognize is that while we have been on it 10 days, our Republican colleagues have refused to entertain one Democratic amendment in those 10 days. What they are saying is, we want you to debate this bill on our terms or we are not going to debate it at all. So they bring the bill to the floor, they make a couple of speeches, they lament the fact that we cannot have this cave-in on Democratic amendments, and then they pull the bill and move on to something else. We have been playing this charade, this game, now for 10 days: Put the bill down, give a couple of speeches, pull the bill off, blame it on the Democrats. I do not know about anybody else, but I think that gets a little tiresome. We have seen this charade now in the name of education for 10 days, and we may see it for a lot more.”