Thomas Daschle: “the majority leader has just made my point probably better than I can. What he has said is that this offer to have two…”

“the majority leader has just made my point probably better than I can. What he has said is that this offer to have two amendments, one Republican and one Democrat, both dealing with tax, under a time agreement, is objectionable to them. My point originally was the reason it is objectionable is because they don't want to get this legislation passed. They do not want to see closure to it. That is really what is behind all of this. This is not some concern about a tax amendment. This is concern about ultimately moving this legislation to a point where we can get completion. The reason the majority leader cannot get unanimous consent is not because it is not fair. It is because there are colleagues on his side who want to drag this out past the Fourth of July. They want to start using the clock. That is what this is about. You want a blow-by-blow account of the play-by-play action here? It is that. We are simply playing the clock. Because if you play it long enough, we run out of time and then, guess what, we do not pass a tobacco bill. We can play that. We can stay on this bill through June, if we want to. But I am telling you, this legislation ought to pass. It is about saving kids' lives. It is about making them healthy. It is about coming up with new tobacco policy, and we are prepared to stick to whatever it takes to see that we get that done. I don't understand why that would not be a fair proposal.”