Asa Hutchinson: “I will make a few closing remarks here to my colleagues. Tomorrow's debate I believe is critically important for the…”

“I will make a few closing remarks here to my colleagues. Tomorrow's debate I believe is critically important for the Nation. I would like to think as a result of this debate we are going to pass out of this House a legislative proposal that will go to the Senate, that will garner the support necessary there, and be passed by the Senate, get over the filibuster, and be sent to the President. But I am a realist here in this Congress, and I understand the battle we are up against. I know the temptation is, well, we passed Shays-Meehan out of the last Congress. Let us come back in and just cast the same vote. We had about 150 votes for our bill here, but the Shays-Meehan got the majority, and it went to the Senate, and it failed over there. I would just make a comment here that I think is instructive that we can learn from it. I actually used this quote in the last debate in the last Congress. This was from RollCall, a publication here on Capitol Hill. It is dated August 6, 1998, a year ago, when we were engaged in this debate. It says, 'One leadership source said that the Republican leaders favored the Shays-Meehan bill going to the Senate because the Senate already voted on it, and it has no chance of passing. While the freshman bill would pose a slightly greater threat in the Senate because, when you offer something new, and streamline, it becomes a new fight.' I just yearn for a new fight. I think that we ought to learn from our past mistakes.”