Max Baucus: “First, I want to deeply thank my two colleagues who previously spoke, Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Alexander of…”

“First, I want to deeply thank my two colleagues who previously spoke, Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Alexander of Tennessee, for their nice, warm compliments. I deeply appreciate that. It means a lot to me because they are both very fine Senators. They are terrific, as a matter of fact. A couple of points to clear the record. Senator Collins said Senator Enzi has been working on this bill for about a decade. That is not accurate. There was an earlier bill called the streamline act, or something like that. I have forgotten what it was. It was an attempt at a compact among States to address this issue. They worked on it and worked on it and worked on it for close to a decade and then couldn't agree. I think 24 States agreed, the remaining States did not agree, so that was the end of that. This bill is to ram through what other States would not agree to and to try to find ``the lowest common denominator.'' That is basically what this bill is, a new bill. This bill has had, to my knowledge, no vetting at all by any committee in any significant way. This bill has been referred to the Finance Committee. As the Senator from Tennessee points out, the Finance Committee has not reported out the bill. That is true. Frankly, we know one good reason why it hasn't is because we have been meeting very frequently at the staff levels.…”