Thomas Daschle: “I want to clarify a couple of matters that I think ought to be understood as we work our way through the impasse. The…”

“I want to clarify a couple of matters that I think ought to be understood as we work our way through the impasse. The first is that a cloture vote, a victory on cloture on the Chafee amendment may move the ball ahead slightly, but there are scores of Chafee amendments, all of which will be subject to the same cloture vote process, each taking 30 hours. So if you multiply 30 hours times 30 amendments, that is a lot of time, and we don't have a lot of time. It is not only the amendments, but it is the titles themselves, the banking, the finance, the commerce titles that have to be added to the trunk of the bill. They, too, will be subject to cloture and will require a substantial amount of time. So unless we get an agreement, even if the caucus, even if our Democratic caucus would vote for cloture, there are Senators who would oppose moving the ISTEA bill forward without an agreement, which brings us to the need to vote for cloture in any case. So it is with unanimity the Democrats are hoping that we can work with our friends in the majority to see if we can't reach that agreement.”