John Cornyn: “to my knowledge we do have a Secretary of Defense, and his name is Leon Panetta. It is my understanding that Mr. Panetta…”

“to my knowledge we do have a Secretary of Defense, and his name is Leon Panetta. It is my understanding that Mr. Panetta is going to stay on the job, a job he has done very well as Secretary of Defense and as CIA director for the last several years. The majority leader knows full well the reason why cloture was denied-- or closing off debate was denied, because there are reasonable requests being made on this side for additional information. I hope and trust information will be provided in the next few days. When we come back from the recess, we will have another vote and another opportunity for Senators to express themselves. This is not any attempt to kill this nomination. This is not a filibuster. I realize it is the headline the majority leader would like the newspapers to write. We actually had some very reasonable discussions going on earlier today among Senators on the Democratic side and the Republican side to try to work this out, given the fact that this nomination has just been so recently reported from the Armed Services Committee, and to accommodate the reasonable request for Senators to receive answers to their legitimate questions. We didn't need to have this vote today. We could have delayed it until after the recess. I am confident the vote would have turned out differently.…”