Chuck Grassley: “I had an opportunity to hear about one-fourth of the presentation of my good friend, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr.…”

“I had an opportunity to hear about one-fourth of the presentation of my good friend, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Torricelli. I heard him compliment my efforts as author of this legislation. In fact, this bill has been so successful in the Senate only because Senator Torricelli, as ranking Democrat on the Courts Subcommittee, has been so cooperative, recognizing there is a problem that should be addressed and working in a bipartisan way to make sure such a bill was put together and introduced by me and him, and then working through a long hearing process in the subcommittee and the full committee to develop a bill that would be reported out of the Judiciary Committee, a committee that tends to be very evenly divided on a lot of issues, by a very wide margin. Our bill came out with a fair sized majority. Then it passed overwhelmingly in the Senate with only 14 dissenting votes. We had a very difficult time conferencing this bill, but there was finally an effort to go to conference. Senator Torricelli was very helpful in working out the details of the conference.”