Thomas Daschle: “I am disappointed that the underlying amendment was withdrawn. That was an amendment offered by the distinguished…”

“I am disappointed that the underlying amendment was withdrawn. That was an amendment offered by the distinguished majority leader and myself. We are certainly going to be coming back at the earliest possible time to continue the debate. We have had a good debate today. A couple of amendments were offered to the amendment. This is a revenue bill, and certainly it is within the right of the Senator from Arkansas to offer this amendment. This is a key amendment that I hope we can address. We have begun discussions about how we might address it over the course of the next couple of days. It would be my hope that we could get a vote on this amendment, whether it is freestanding or it is a part of the bill, and whatever our Republican colleagues may wish to offer as well, but we have to keep moving along. The sooner we can dispose of this amendment, the sooner we can get to some of these other issues. I hope we can reintroduce the ethanol amendment at the earliest possible date, continue the debate on that, finish it, and then move to the other issues as we debate this bill. So it is disappointing, but I hope we can regroup and begin again tomorrow.”