On the recordMay 9, 2013
The Senator would be correct, and I would add one other thought. What he is now asking us to do is to go back and vote on votes we already took when we went through the budget process and amendments did not pass. So he is saying, my amendments didn't pass, but I am not going to let a conference happen unless I get my way. We have a majority. We have a minority. We went through hundreds of amendments. Some of them passed and some of them did not. It is the process we go through. Then we take what we passed--the House, by the way, passed a very different budget--we go to conference and resolve the differences. That is what a conference is. But if every Senator came out here and said on every bill we ever did we are not going to go to conference unless I get the amendment I lost on the floor, we would never do anything in this country. That is not how a democracy works.
