Chuck Grassley: “with the debate coming to a conclusion the way that it has today, I am really starting to wonder if Congress really…”

“with the debate coming to a conclusion the way that it has today, I am really starting to wonder if Congress really wants to reauthorize the SCHIP program. I worked with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle Senators Baucus and Rockefeller and my good friend Senator Hatch to come up with a bipartisan compromise. We passed a bill in the Senate with a remarkable 68 votes. Who would have predicted that when this session began? We sat down with our House colleagues and hammered out a compromise that very closely followed the Senate bill. That compromise bill again passed the Senate by a wide bipartisan margin and received 265 votes in the House. As we all know that bill was vetoed, and 2 weeks ago, the veto was sustained in the House. In the 2 weeks since that vote, I have seen some of the strangest twists and turns I have seen in all my years in politics. First, I sat down with Democratic leadership in both Houses. We agreed on the compromises we thought we could make to get the final votes we needed to pass the House. At the same time, the minority leader of the House released a letter with the conditions his Members needed to vote for a bill. Seeing as the compromises we were willing to make seemed to resemble the conditions in the leader's letter, we began meeting with House Republicans to see if we could bridge the final gap. We started a process and made some real progress.…”