Bill Nelson: “I say to my good personal friend and colleague from Florida, if we want to solve this and other problems, we have to…”

“I say to my good personal friend and colleague from Florida, if we want to solve this and other problems, we have to have some genuine bipartisanship, and that bipartisanship has to start at the top. There has to be an atmosphere of mutual respect and willingness to work together, and it has to start in the White House. I have shared these comments publicly and privately. Whenever you face something as contentious as the matters we face--matters of war and peace, the making of Medicare financially solvent, the question of prescription drugs and their cost--you simply can't do it by taking a unilateral position over and over on either side of this aisle; it has to be that people have to come together and work it out. There also has to be a sense of mutual trust, of people telling the truth to each other, of doing what the standards were in the old days where a man's word was his bond. Until we get that, we are going to continue to have difficulty. We see the problems right now in a war that is certainly a difficult one. We all share the same goal: that the interests of America are furthered if we can stabilize Iraq. How do we get there? There has been so much mistrust and suspicion that has been bred because of all the inconsistencies and lack of information and misinformation and massaged information. But that is then; now is now. What do we do? Thus far, it looks as though the White House and the leadership in Congress can't come together.”