Chuck Grassley: “before I give my reasons to my colleagues for why they should support this legislation and why it came out of my…”

“before I give my reasons to my colleagues for why they should support this legislation and why it came out of my committee, there are several thank-yous I would like to give, first to Senator Baucus because this is truly a bipartisan bill that came out of committee. In fact, I think it came out totally unanimous. Over a period of many months working with Senator Baucus, we were able to put something together to get that kind of bipartisan support. Then later on, the HELP Committee reported a bill. There was extremely great cooperation between Senator Enzi and Senator Kennedy with Senator Baucus and me. I do not say this tongue-in-cheek, I say it as a matter of fact: I think if one can get Senator Enzi and Senator Grassley together on one side of the aisle and Senator Baucus and Senator Kennedy together on the other side of the aisle, there ought to be something that ought to pass this body. I also lend compliments and support for helping move this bill along to Senator Mikulski and Senator DeWine because they had a very controversial amendment--they may not have thought it was controversial--and we were able to work out some understandings beyond the action on this floor to accomplish that. So we would not be here today doing this bill without Senator Mikulski and Senator DeWine's cooperation. I thank the Senator from Maryland for that, and Senator DeWine as well.…”