Thomas Daschle: “in the final 3 minutes, let me quickly comment on a few points raised. First, to the point that we need to comply with…”

“in the final 3 minutes, let me quickly comment on a few points raised. First, to the point that we need to comply with the House prior to the time we vote in the Senate, as the distinguished Senator from North Dakota said, that is not usually the practice here. The Senate takes its stand, the House takes its stand, and we work out whatever differences there are in the two stands in conference. We don't say because the House has a position, we have to comply with the House position before we even go to conference. I hope our colleagues will not set that very dangerous precedent as their motivation for voting for the Republican amendment. Secondly, we have gone through this many times. The formulation we have used as a body, as a government, is the formulation offered in the Democratic amendment. We give the administration latitude to administer it. We have created these programs, disaster assistance and crop assistance, for those relief benefits to be provided. That is what we do here. It is the Republican amendment that creates a new infrastructure, not the Democratic amendment. The traditional and accepted approach we have used in disaster after disaster is the one we offer again and the one for which we voted last fall and received 79 votes. Thirdly, what troubles me the most is that the Republican amendment is one-half of what is estimated to be the need.…”