Pete Sessions: “I thank the Chair for allowing me to have the floor. Look, we were moving--Senator Grassley had a list of 16, 18…”

“I thank the Chair for allowing me to have the floor. Look, we were moving--Senator Grassley had a list of 16, 18 amendments Wednesday night. He was prepared to begin the voting on those Thursday, Friday, Saturday if need be, as Senator Reid had said we could work on Saturday. Monday, what happened? They had the super- amendment, they had the Corker-Hoeven amendment, and the majority decided to sit on that and not allow any amendments to occur Thursday, not allow any amendments to occur Friday, and only have a cloture vote on Monday. And that vote--I don't think our Members understood fully-- gave complete power to the majority to dominate this process, to end the idea that we would have an open, fair process. It ended with the cloture vote Monday. We were in the process to vote on a series of amendments. Senator Grassley worked and worked, and he got 35 amendments that he said we would agree to, out of the hundreds that were out there, to have votes on. Yet now they come back and say 15 or 17, and now we are going to do this, and we want this amendment and that amendment. The process, I hate to say--it is pretty obvious to me--on Monday afternoon was altered. We had gone from an open debate process, as Senator Leahy conducted in the Judiciary Committee--at the end of it, he did say: Anybody else have anything else they want to offer? And there was nothing else to offer, and he voted. The committee was not a normal committee. We had four of the Gang of 8 on it.…”