Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Whitehouse. I very much appreciate his comments here today and especially appreciate his participation in terms of moving this forward in a bipartisan way. I worked with my staff diligently on this bill. I was lucky to have a chief of staff by the name of Mike Collins who spent many hours working on this. My legislative director, Andrew Wallace--Drew Wallace--worked on this. He is a lawyer by training. Jonathan Black was the legislative assistant in the main policy area. He has been with this bill all along, and he is very evenhanded and very good at dealing with the other staff members in getting people to focus on the goal and not get into the arguments and not get sidetracked. I think this is true of the staff on the Republican side and the staff on the Democratic side. We have had tremendous support, and I expect that to go forward when we start. Indeed, if we can get floor time and get this out--and I believe the bill is ready to go--I think we have the kind of staff effort in the House and the Senate that can resolve most of the major differences without too many problems. So that is what we are looking forward to. As I said earlier, I would like to say a few words about Senator Frank Lautenberg. This is a picture of Senator Lautenberg and his grandchildren. I served on the Environment and Public Works Committee with Senator Lautenberg for a number of years, and there couldn't have been anything he was more passionate about than his grandchildren.…”