Chris Dodd: “As Mo Udall once said: I walked into a barber shop in New Hampshire and said: I am Mo Udall, and I am running for…”

“As Mo Udall once said: I walked into a barber shop in New Hampshire and said: I am Mo Udall, and I am running for President. And the barber said: We were just laughing about that. But I wished to thank the leader. This is an awkward time, obviously, and I wanted to get the bill done. I think Senators Rockefeller and Bond did a good part of this bill, and it is worthy of our support. The leader knows my longstanding concerns over this retroactive immunity. There is significant debate about this, and I feel strongly about it. I will look forward to coming back in January, and hopefully between now and coming back, maybe there would be some suggestions on how we might ease some of the concerns people have and satisfy them, without necessarily granting retroactive immunity. I know there are various ideas kicking around, some sort of a compromise idea that may be worked out. Certainly, there will be some time to think about this so we can avoid this when it comes back again. I appreciate the fact we are not going to proceed with it now. That gives us a chance to work on this some more. We have at least some time, I think the end of January or early February before the law will expire, so we have some time to come back and deal with this again. I appreciate the fact we are not going to have to go forward. I would have been put in a position to contest this in every possible way, utilizing all the tools available to us, and I am very grateful to the leader for moving on.”