Political Quotes

“In response to what the Senator from Montana indicated, let me say this. Obviously I am not privy to his private conversations, but we were sitting in those meetings in good faith, and I didn't hear from anybody around that table--more than 14 Members--who resisted the idea we should not proceed, that we should not work out these areas, that it was impossible. Maybe in the final analysis, it might have been impossible, but that certainly was not the expression of the sentiment in that meeting during that course of time. The fact is quite the contrary. I think most of the Senators--as I said, it was equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, including Senator Jeffords from Vermont. There was an indication of strong interest to proceed to try to see if we could work through and resolve the identified areas in disagreement. Those are the ones I mentioned previously. So I didn't hear any indication there was a "can't do" attitude. In fact, just the contrary. They were suggesting we could proceed and instructed the staff to work over the weekend on those various areas. Suffice it to say we didn't have the process in the committee to work these through. Obviously, for whatever reasons, it did not work out as a result of those negotiations. But they were, I think, very close. I think we were very close.”