Evidently Feingold did get some changes made to the bankruptcy bill he was

flpoljunkie

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Thu Mar-10-05 06:17 PM
Original message

Evidently Feingold did get some changes made to the bankruptcy bill he was

Edited on Thu Mar-10-05 07:07 PM by flpoljunkie

unable to get a hearing or vote on in committee. Here is his speech from last night regarding these changes. Most of them were accepted unanimously right before the final vote for passage. Feingold is a great Senator. I wish we had more like him.

http://feingold.senate.gov/~feingold/statements/05/03/2005310448.html

Mr. President, I would like to have the attention of the Senate to discuss my remaining amendments to the bankruptcy bill. I think my colleagues are aware that I strongly oppose this bill and that I am very disappointed in the process that has brought us to this point. I do not believe the sponsors of this bill and its supporters in the other body have dealt fairly with the proposed amendments.

I understand the Senator from Utah came to the floor earlier in the day and was complaining that I had a number of amendments and that I did not intend to vote for the bill.

I have been a legislator for 22 years. This is not an auction. Even if you are going to vote against a bill, if you have an amendment you believe will make it a better bill, it is still a worthy consideration. I was told in the committee, where I wanted to offer many of these amendments, that I should not offer them, that I should wait until the bill came to the floor to offer the amendments. So in most cases that is exactly what I did, being assured there would be a good faith response and consideration of the amendments. Well, of course, that is not what has happened to date. And I categorically reject the idea that simply because you do not think a bill is good, you do not have a proper role on the floor of the Senate in trying to improve it.

This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted. It was a classic bait and switch. Negotiations have been minimal and pro forma. Extremely reasonable amendments were rejected supposedly because they were not drafted correctly, according to the sponsors, but there was no willingness to work on the language of the amendments so they could become acceptable.

<>I have taken some time in going through these amendments, and perhaps people watching would say: Why is this Senator waiting until the last minute to raise these issues?

Of course, that is not the case at all. I waited patiently in the Judiciary Committee, provided these amendments well in advance in almost every case for everybody to review. I started to offer the amendments in committee and make my arguments. We received no substantive response at all in the committee on almost every amendment.

When one Senator actually could not take it anymore on the other side and offered a substantive response to my amendment, he said, I apologize to the chairman for making an argument, basically because apparently they had been instructed not to talk about these amendments.

He asked: Senator, why are you doing this? We need to get this out of committee. Why do you not wait until the floor to offer these commonsense amendments, and then we in good faith will work together to try to solve these problems?

Well, that is not what is happening. This is just a slam dunk. There is no danger anymore about considering these amendments. They got cloture. There are plenty of votes. What is the harm of fixing the bill? What is the harm of doing the right thing? What is the harm of doing our job as legislators and making sure we do not stick the entire bankruptcy community with these provisions that do not make any sense? Come on, we can do this now. It is safe to go back in the water. This is going to become law, and not a single one of my provisions will do any damage whatsoever to the fundamental intent or goals of this bill.

I do thank my colleagues for their attention in this presentation. These are highly technical issues. Some may seem minor, and some may actually be minor. I do not want to take the Senate's time on these amendments, which is why I attempted to get them considered in committee and have tried to make myself available at every instance to discuss them over the past week and a half.

I look forward to discussions over the next few hours with the managers of the bill. Perhaps we can still reach agreement that will make some of these votes unnecessary.