Kit Bond: “I want to echo what Senator Bryan said, and add my sincere thanks and congratulations to him for his leadership. Andy…”

“I want to echo what Senator Bryan said, and add my sincere thanks and congratulations to him for his leadership. Andy Vermilye has been outstanding to work with. We spent a great deal of time together working on this problem. It required a lot of good humor and patience to come this point. I want to single out two people on my staff, Maggie Fisher and John Kamarck, who have worked long and hard. Maggie in particular has been involved in many, many negotiations to assure that we get the best possible bill. This was a very long and very tedious task. There were times when I thought we would never see the day when we would even be coming to the situation where we would have a vote on final passage. But I believe the staff should be mentioned, and the others deserve a great deal of thanks because it has been a long and arduous process, but I think a very profitable one.”