Katie Porter: “As we wind up this first session of the 105th Congress, all of us I think are pretty well exhausted. We have had little…”

“As we wind up this first session of the 105th Congress, all of us I think are pretty well exhausted. We have had little sleep night after night, especially during the last week. We have been in intense negotiations for hours and hours on end. Nerves are frazzled. We say things we may not mean. We make accusations that are perhaps unfounded. We even raise questions about the processes of democracy so that we can have things come out our way. It is a time when Republicans sometimes are fighting it out with Democrats, the White House is fighting it out with the Congress, the Senate is fighting it out with the House, authorizers are opposite appropriators, committee chairmen are against other committee chairmen, and often things get a bit out of hand. Several of the bills, there are four that remain, including this one, have been subject to intense negotiations. This conference report has certainly been one of them. But in the end, all of us believe in the processes of democracy that allow us to work with one another and to find the middle, the place where the American people are. Compromise in my judgment is not at all a bad word, it is exactly what our Founders envisioned for us.”