Political Quotes

“I thank you very much. Madam President, I just want to say a personal word to Chairman Burr, and maybe it is to everyone in this body. One of the things I have learned from two prior cyber bills is that if you really want to get a bill done, it has to be bipartisan, particularly a bill that is technical, difficult, and hard to put together, and a bill where often there are two sides. I thank you for recognizing this. We stood shoulder to shoulder and the right things happened, and now we can go to conference. I also want to say that we did everything in this bill we possibly could to satisfy what were legitimate privacy concerns. The managers' package had 14 such amendments, and before that our staffs sat down with a number of proposals from Senators and went over literally dozens of additional amendments. So we took what we could. When the chairman talks about the balance, what he means is that this is the first time the chamber of commerce has supported a bipartisan bill. This is the first time we had virtually all the big employers-- banks and retailers and other companies--supporting a bipartisan bill because today everybody understands what the problem of cybersecurity is much greater. So we stood shoulder to shoulder, and you all responded, and I am very grateful. There is still a lot of work to be done, but, Mr. Chairman, you and your staff have been terrific.…”