Mike Thompson: “I thought he was doing all of us a favor by slowing us down a little bit. There was an awful lot of talk about we must…”

“I thought he was doing all of us a favor by slowing us down a little bit. There was an awful lot of talk about we must get this done by September 11 for symbolic reasons, and symbolism is important. But it is not nearly as important as it is to get this right. We will not get it right forever. We will be dealing with it probably for some time to come. But it is important to get it as right as we can. I think it is very important that we take the time necessary to do that. We can disagree as to how long is enough time. But I do think we can all agree that in retrospect, we were kind of headed toward a stampede there for a little while where we wanted to get something passed so we could say we got something passed. That receives short-term benefits maybe to us but it doesn't do much in terms of long-term benefits to the country. I think we are where we need to be now.”