Keystone XL Pipeline Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. HOEVEN. Mr. President, I thank the bill manager on our side of
the aisle, the good Senator from Alaska, as well as the bill manager on
the Democratic side, the Senator from the State of Washington, for
working together and trying to get a list of all of the amendments and
do everything possible to get them scheduled for a vote.

I ask that Members on both sides of the aisle work with the bill
managers to try and get a list of amendments so they can be scheduled
for a vote. As the Senator from Alaska said, we have already had at
least 19 amendments. We know there are more amendments that Senators
would like to have a vote on, and we appreciate and understand that.
There has been a real effort to try to get those votes scheduled.

Again, I thank the bill managers for their hard work and ask that
Members on both sides of the aisle work with the bill managers to try
and get those amendments identified where they need to have a vote and
get them scheduled so we can get to the votes in a timely manner so
Members can have as much information as possible ahead of time in order
to consider their respective issues and have a vote.

We have to remember that in trying to go back to an open amendment
process and regular order, there is some work on figuring out how to
get that going and to do so in a bipartisan way, and of course we are
working through it on this legislation.

A final point: At the end of the day, we will be discussing more
about this legislation, but it comes down to how the individual Members
of this body feel about this underlying legislation. It is about
energy, jobs, economic growth, and national security at a time when
energy security for our country is so very important. Again, this goes
to the underlying merits.

Let's see if we can't get these amendments scheduled and vote on them
and move this along as well as we can this week and get that done. It
is not only important for this legislation, but we want to have that
same kind of open process with other legislation as well. It is about
getting the work done for the American people.

With that, I yield back to the Senator from Alaska.

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