Frank Pallone: “If I could just say, that is the other part that is so important is, again going back when the Democrats were in the…”

“If I could just say, that is the other part that is so important is, again going back when the Democrats were in the majority, most legislation was done on a consensus, bipartisan basis. In other words, you would find in my committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, who of course was the chairman, and legislation, if it was an energy bill, if it was a health care bill, he would start by going to the ranking member, the Republican man, the minority, and saying what input do you want into this bill and let us sit down and there would be meetings, and they would try to build a consensus on legislation. That does not happen anymore around here. I mean, it is very rare to see someone who is the chairman of the committee on the Republican side reaching out to the Democrat on the committee and saying let us see if we can work together and come to a consensus on a bill. That is why most of the time you did not have to have these situations where you would vote in the middle of the night and have to get people to change votes because, if the bill came to the floor most likely it was a consensus measure and most people voted for it. Some people may say not everything has to be that way, and not everything was that way, but the bottom line is when someone is elected, when you are elected or I am elected, our constituents send us down here.…”