Barney Frank: “as I realized how much time was going to be wasted on this effort to allow some Members to get back in the graces of…”

“as I realized how much time was going to be wasted on this effort to allow some Members to get back in the graces of some of their financial supporters whom they had to alienate, and as we were lionizing, justifiably, Mr. Morris, the refrain kept going through my head, Hey, Mr. Tally Clerk, tally up our votes; daylight comes and we want to go home. We cannot go home because here is what happened: the bankruptcy bill came up, and some Members on the Republican side had to choose between people who are interested in vigorously protesting abortion and the financial community; and they decided to support the people who vigorously protest abortion, which meant that the bill died. Now, there is no way this bill is going to pass. Understand that what they did then was this. Let us be clear about the sequence. The bill died because some of the Members there were torn between the people opposed to abortion and the people with money. And you would have thought they could have waited until maybe February or March to get back in the graces of the people with money. But apparently the separation anxiety on the Republican side of not being continuously in the bosom, if not the pocket, of large financial interests, was so great that they had to come up with, and let me use the technical parliamentary term, the cockamamiest scheme I have ever seen on the floor of a legitimate democratic legislature.”