Tom Udall: “The Senator made some nice comments about me--he was probably a little too generous--and I wanted to also thank him for…”

“The Senator made some nice comments about me--he was probably a little too generous--and I wanted to also thank him for all the work he has done on this issue. He has been a passionate voice for change, and he and I have both reached out to our friends across the aisle and tried to get things done. I always bring this back to the question of why are we doing this. We are doing this so government can tackle the issues the American people care about. And I think there are two times in history--I am sure there are many others--where for me the Senate was in its glory days. We should always remember we have that potential. We see little bits of light every now and then here, such as with the passage of a transportation bill or a farm bill out of the Senate where bipartisanship exists and we come together, but I wish to talk very briefly about two time periods that I consider to be the glory days of the Senate. One was before the Civil War. In the 40 years before the Civil War, the Senate was grappling with how do we hold the Union together. There was tremendous discussion, and Senators such as Daniel Webster and John Calhoun and others would work with each other and have heated debate, but for that 40 years before the Civil War, they held the country together. It was the Senate that fashioned those compromises that allowed the country to stay out of the Civil War.…”