On the recordDecember 31, 2012
the hour is nigh. Now Washington is awash in the rumor that there might be some progress being made. I hope so. If there was anything that was made clear to this Senator in the reelection in one of the biggest States in the Union, it was that the people want us to come together and to stop this bickering, the excessive ideological rigidity, and the excessive partisanship. That is a huge turnoff because ideological rigidity and excessive partisanship are impediments to getting people to come together with commonsense decisions for solutions. Obviously, there is an easy way. Hopefully that is what is being tweaked at the moment in a final solution, with the President to speak in about 30 minutes. I hope so. Mr. President, I am going to leave you with this thought. My colleagues know that a little over a quarter century ago, I had the privilege of seeing our home planet from the perspective of looking through the window of a spacecraft. It was the 24th flight of the space shuttle. It was early in the space shuttle program. It is indelibly etched in my mind's eye, as I looked back at Earth, what I saw. I did not see political divisions. I did not see religious divisions. I did not see ethnic divisions. What I saw is that we were all in this together, all a part of planet Earth. If we could remember that in our politics, we would all get along so much better.…
