Mike Levin: “Yogi Berra, explaining the difficulty of playing in the afternoon sun and shadows of Yankee Stadium's notorious left…”

“Yogi Berra, explaining the difficulty of playing in the afternoon sun and shadows of Yankee Stadium's notorious left field is reported to have commented, "It gets late early." We have before the Senate a huge Omnibus Appropriations and Emergency Supplemental bill which spends more than $486 billion and legislates across a broad range of issues of great importance. We are faced now with this massive, sweeping legislation because the 105th Congress did not do its work. In the 105th Congress, it got late early. From the very outset of this Congress, the majority leadership set a slow pace and avoided fully addressing the major issues before the Nation. The 105th Congress failed to reform our campaign finance laws, failed even to debate a patient's bill of rights, failed to act on legislation to reduce tobacco use by our young people, failed to even to take up serious regulatory reform, and failed to address the problems looming in the future of Social Security.”