reclaiming my time , mr. chairman , i would just say to the gentleman that we passed this legislation , as i mentioned , at least two times on the floor with republican votes . 
as the gentleman knows , we do not have the majority on the democratic side , so it was with republican votes that we passed it before . 
i , too , hope those votes will be here today because we do have an historic opportunity to pass the underlying bill but , more importantly in terms of this historical opportunity that is presented to us , to pass this amendment as well . 
