Chris Dodd: “I will be very brief. The majority leader is here, and my friend from Pennsylvania has very adequately--more than…”

“I will be very brief. The majority leader is here, and my friend from Pennsylvania has very adequately--more than adequately--described the history of this legislation. It has been a journey of some time here to bring this legislation to the point we are this evening, to the final adoption unanimously by this body. I am very grateful, as well, to the chairman of our committee, Mike Enzi, who has been tremendously helpful, along with Senator Kennedy and other members of the committee who voted unanimously to report this bill out on a bipartisan basis. As the Senator from Pennsylvania has pointed out, the majority leader and minority leader have been tremendously helpful, along with the majority and minority leader staffs who have helped us on the Senate floor work through some final little knots on this bill that had to be worked out before we could bring this bill to the consideration of the full body. There are some very special people who worked very hard. The autism community is a large community. It is a diverse one. There are many points of view that have been represented by various people. It has been critically important that there has been an effort to come together. They have done that in part because of the leadership of Bob and Suzanne Wright, who played a very instrumental role, who are grandparents of an autistic child and who work tirelessly with the organization they helped found, Autism Speaks.…”