Barton actually had an amendment in committee to shorten the time on the expansion, but he withdrew it when Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore).
The California Democrat offered a handful of amendments in committee that failed to get enough votes to pass, but said she has a list of 27 amendments to offer as the bill moves forward.
The Senate bill, having survived a barrage of hostile amendments in committee, is headed to the full Senate with momentum that has surprised even its supporters, driven by a coalition including Latinos, high-tech businesses, growers, labor federations and religious groups.
The justice and security bill is self-evidently against everything they stand for, which may explain recent confusing signals from the party and why a Lib Dem voted against Tory amendments in committee.
So far, the bipartisan coalition (apparently they've stopped calling themselves a "gang" and are now a "group of eight" instead) has held impressively firm, through over 200 amendments in committee.
While few pieces of GOP legislation garner dozens of Democratic yeas, the vote was far closer than other deregulation bills that Waters had decided not to fight on the floor -- either because the CFTC had already adopted their key terms, or because she'd secured amendments in committee substantially weakening them.
In Oklahoma, where Democrats have bottled up a constitutional amendment in committee, dueling protests last week led to the arrest of a man who was carrying a fake gun and yelling antigay slurs.
He said that he intends to open the bill up for amendments in his committee next week, and to get it to the Senate floor for consideration before Thanksgiving.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md ., who pR-Md .d the amendment in committee, said that his background in medicine motivated his efforts to block the District lawho
"We cannot ban American bureaucrats from traveling to Russia because in general they don't come here," said Dmitry Gudkov, a member of Parliament who voted against the amendment in committee.
