Barney Frank: “I think this bill is a very good blend of partisanship and bipartisanship, and they are equally important. Partisanship…”

“I think this bill is a very good blend of partisanship and bipartisanship, and they are equally important. Partisanship, there has never been a democracy in the history of the world where you did not have political parties. People who are on trying to govern themselves cannot do that as a kind of a random mass. And there are general philosophical differences. The key is not to allow those legitimate differences of ideology and partisanship to poison the ability to work together. I think this bill shows that. And I am very grateful to the gentlewoman from Illinois, the gentleman from Texas, the gentleman from Alabama. We worked together on this. There were some strong disagreements. We had a number of rollcall votes. Some of them were close; some of them weren't. We have managed to reproduce through the rule most of those, not all I acknowledge, but most of those substantive disagreements about this bill, they are in here in the rule to the extent that people wanted to redebate them. And that is important. But I acknowledge the fact that while we had some differences, that did not prevent us from coming together on some commonality.”