Tom Harkin: “as always, it is a joy and interesting to listen to my friend and colleague, my chairman, talk about the past and what…”

“as always, it is a joy and interesting to listen to my friend and colleague, my chairman, talk about the past and what we have done together. He is right, we have worked together closely. I followed his lead on a lot of things, such as when Arlen Specter, back in the mid-1990s, wanted to do double funding for NIH. He took the lead on that. I did what I could to help. And we got the job done under his great leadership. So we have worked together on a lot of different things. And where we have had differences, we have had differences, but we have always been, I think, upfront and open about those differences. While I love Arlen Specter dearly, and respect him greatly, he is not my twin, he is not my clone, so we do have different ways of approaching things once in a while. And that is the way it ought to be around here. There should not be, as he said, this big gulf between us, but there ought to be an honest airing of differences of views on how we ought to approach things. Take the Byrd amendment, for example. I stated earlier, when we first brought the bill to the floor, that Senator Specter had done a superb job, and he was always open with my staff and me in crafting and putting together this bill. I said when you are dealt a bad hand, you have to do the best you can. And Senator Specter did. So in terms of the bill itself and how it is crafted, I do not have problems. What I have problems with is our allocation. That is where I have problems.…”