Jim Nussle: “I say first to my friend from Illinois, great job. He and the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) have probably done…”

“I say first to my friend from Illinois, great job. He and the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) have probably done something here tonight that none of the other amendments or substitutes even attempted to do, and that was to bridge the many varied ideas within our conference into one document, one amendment, one substitute. It is going to have some opposition because it is imperfect. This entire day, one could argue, was an imperfect day. Some may have a different way of putting it, but today was about controlling spending. And as far as I am concerned, any day we can debate how to control spending is a good day. At the end of this day, and we are getting close to the end of the day, it is possible nothing will pass and there will be some people, including myself as I am driving back home, wondering why did we go through this then, if, in fact, absolutely nothing passes? That is not going to be easy to necessarily understand for everybody that is listening except that we have got to start this discussion. We really do. I mean, there are too many situations out there that are going unchecked.”