relax the issue
A non-confrontational device to make your final contribution to a strand of argument. The counterpart of "raising an issue".
"After having raised the point of budget revisions, Jim wanted to get on with other business so he relaxed the issue by alluding to maintaining the integrity of the project cycle."
"Well, it seems we are not going to see eye-to-eye on this so I want to relax the issue by saying just look at article number five."
"Well, it seems we are not going to see eye-to-eye on this so I want to relax the issue by saying just look at article number five."