Thomas Daschle: “The amendment builds upon what I hope will be a very significant vote at 5:15 this afternoon. As we note, the first…”

“The amendment builds upon what I hope will be a very significant vote at 5:15 this afternoon. As we note, the first amendment hopefully brings us together, Republicans and Democrats, in a way that allows us to say: Yes, we understand there is a problem; yes, we have to respond. Even though we may not yet have an agreement on how we might respond, there should be a response. That is, in essence, what we are saying with the passage of the resolution that we have just ordered a vote on. Now we go to the next phase: All right, if we recognize there is a problem, then what do we do about it? As many of us noted this morning, we are offering a series of proposals that we hope will allow us to respond in a meaningful way to the situation that we find ourselves in in agriculture.”