National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Thank you for clarification. I just wanted to make sure.

Madam President, I discussed with the distinguished chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the distinguished ranking member my concerns that earlier I attempted to gain unanimous consent to modify my amendment regarding the sale of F-16s to Taiwan in order to make it germane. I was happy to do that in order to get a vote, but the chairman tells me there is an objection to that.

I wished to make clear that any amendment that is offered--whether now in this list or subsequently in the managers' package or otherwise--and is being treated differently than mine is, then I am going to object to unanimous consent.

Through the Chair, I would ask the distinguished chairman of the Armed Services Committee are there any amendments on this list that were modified in order to make them germane?

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Mr. CORNYN. If I may be permitted to thank the distinguished chairman for that offer. It is unclear to me how it will actually be executed--and all of this could have been avoided, from my perspective, if a simple unanimous consent request had been allowed to modify an amendment that I had that was not germane to make it germane so we could have a simple up-or-down vote, something that was in the nature of a technical correction, which I would think as a matter of custom and courtesy would be allowed. But apparently that is not the way things are operating.

All of these convulsions are being engaged in simply to avoid an objection to a unanimous consent request to modify an amendment to make it germane. It could all be avoided and we could have taken care of this in 10 or 15 minutes. I don't understand if the distinguished chairman is actually making that unanimous consent request at this time or is merely explaining what his intentions are. I will try to work with him, but I am not yet sure this is going to work as he hopes it will. My objection will remain that any amendment that was not germane when filed but could be made germane by modification, as mine could, would not be permitted to be in this managers' package or passed by unanimous consent.

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