Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I have some sympathy for the motion that Senator Brown made because he just came from a meeting with people who are very interested in getting this multiemployer pension issue straightened out. It was 3 or 4 years ago that I spoke to a big delegation of people who were mostly from the Central States Teamsters, and they were very much lobbying for a solution to this problem. They treated me like a hero because at that time we were probably in the middle of a Government Accountability Office investigation of the mismanagement of these funds. We thought we were going to get a GAO report that would show the mismanagement, reap the benefits of that mismanagement, and recoup a lot of funds. Quite frankly, that Government Accountability Office study of about 2 years didn't prove what I thought and what the Central States Teamsters people thought was wrong. We still think the mismanagement was there, but if you don't have an authority like the Government Accountability Office to justify that, it doesn't give you much of a leg to follow up on. Now we have the Butch Lewis Act for which Senator Brown is asking unanimous consent. We also have other proposals that the Senate Committee on Finance, which I chair, has been working on--and not only under my chairmanship. The biggest part of this work was probably done when Senator Hatch was still the chairman of the committee.…”