Thomas Daschle: “The President has just sent Senator Lott and me a letter, indicating his desire to either keep us here or bring us back…”

“The President has just sent Senator Lott and me a letter, indicating his desire to either keep us here or bring us back if we are not sufficiently successful in meeting the goals that we have all indicated we share with regard to the completion of the work on the McCain-Feingold bill. Given his assurances that he will call us back or keep us here--and I certainly hope that that is not necessary because I think there is plenty of opportunity for us throughout the month of October to bring this legislation to the floor and have a good debate--we certainly would not object. As I indicated on Friday, I had two concerns, one, that we would run out of time and, two, that I had not had the opportunity to discuss this matter, and we were precluded from offering the amendment to any other legislation in the event that we would have run out of time. Now there is no concern for running out of time because the President will see to it that we have whatever length of time we need to complete our work.”