Pete Domenici: “I rise to congratulate the majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist. I do not do this because he is my good friend but…”

“I rise to congratulate the majority leader of the Senate, Bill Frist. I do not do this because he is my good friend but because I want to make sure that we all understand that we have had an exceptionally productive legislative year. I thank him especially for his critical help in passing legislation in areas where I have been primarily responsible. In addition to that, I want to summarize the things that have been done this year under his leadership. The reason I came to talk about this is because there is such an overwhelming, high-octane negativism in the air that one would hardly know the Senate was at work. There is so much politics going on that one would wonder whether the Senate is even functioning. Even on the floor there is an awful lot of polarization that has occurred. I do not say this in any real accusatory sense. It is true. In spite of that, in his own way, the majority leader has very quietly and with very mature feelings and inordinate ability grasped details of legislation and has contributed immensely to a success story. I would like to start by talking about matters that this Senator has particularly been involved in. We were able to pass in this body an Energy Policy Act. We have been working at that for almost a decade, but for the last 3 years we have tried each year and failed. This year, we got it done. Obviously, something was done differently.…”