Thomas Daschle: “We cannot get to the rest of the business before us unless that cloture motion is agreed to. There can be no excuse…”

“We cannot get to the rest of the business before us unless that cloture motion is agreed to. There can be no excuse, there can be no reason, after all this debate, after all the meetings, that we cannot at least bring closure to that amendment. Senators still have a right to offer amendments to the bill, but we have to move on. I cannot imagine that there would be a Senator who would want to extend debate beyond the 3 weeks we have now debated Interior and the Byrd amendment. The same could be said of homeland security. If we want to respond to the President, who again today said the time for the Senate to act is now, let's respond on a bipartisan basis and let's vote for cloture on the Lieberman substitute and let's move this legislation along.”