Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am here with Senators Cornyn and Leahy to ask unanimous consent.

831 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the Grassley amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I guess I am not surprised that we would have an objection like this because a program that has been corrupt and that we have been trying to reform for 8 years--every time we reach an agreement, there is big-moneyed interests in this town and around the country that keep it from happening.

So today's objection, unfortunately, represents another victory for those same moneyed, powerful, corrupt interests that have so often worked to kill reforms to a program that they love to abuse for nothing more than their own financial benefit.

It also means that Congress will not be able to pass legislation to reauthorize the program in advance of its expiration on June 30. A narrow subset of big-moneyed and corrupt interests has now shown that they would rather kill the program altogether than have to accept integrity programs designed to clamp down on their bad behavior.

I thank all those groups who have been working with us for 8 years to get this program reformed. A lot of those people use that program. They were willing to make it an honest program.

All of this action today of this objection is unfortunate but not surprising.

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