Thomas Daschle: “here we go again. I thought that we had an understanding about the opportunity that we would be presented to have a good…”

“here we go again. I thought that we had an understanding about the opportunity that we would be presented to have a good debate. In fact, I am going to go back to the Record and check, but I am quite sure that there was some understanding that there would not be any need to fill trees and to prevent open and free debate, because we saw what happened the last time we tried this. It locked up the Senate for weeks on end with absolutely no result. I would ask my colleagues, what are you afraid of here? Why are our colleagues on the other side not willing to allow this body to work its will? Why is the majority party filibustering legislation that the majority of Senators supports? Mr. President, I am disappointed and frustrated. I am prepared to take this to whatever length is required to bring it to a successful resolution this week, next week, at some point in the future. We have a lot of work to do here, and I want to work with the majority leader to find a way to accomplish all that must be done. But I can't think of a better way to slow progress, to stop progress, to preclude us from getting our work done than to deny this body the opportunity to have a good debate and some votes on this important issue. I must say, it is, again, a reminder to the Democratic caucus that when we enter into these agreements, we better check the writing, we better check the specifics, we better ensure we have a clear understanding of what the agreement is.”