Pete Sessions: “The procedure Majority Leader Reid has chosen to utilize is a procedure never before utilized in the Senate. The reason…”

“The procedure Majority Leader Reid has chosen to utilize is a procedure never before utilized in the Senate. The reason this is more than a question of fairness is because it is a transfer, an arrogation of power to the leadership by which, for the first time in the history of the Senate, the majority leader will be able to approve or disapprove whether a Senator gets a vote on an amendment. This process by which the leadership will select a limited number of amendments, place them in this clay-pigeon maneuver and only those amendments get voted on and every other amendment is rejected, is unprecedented in the Senate. I had a senior Member of the Senate come up to me with some alarm not long ago this morning and say: You need to be able to get amendments. I don't think we have thought this through. It is dawning on me how significant this is.”