David Thomas: “I find it ironic that this particular conference, the first conference in my memory, was held entirely with the public…”

“I find it ironic that this particular conference, the first conference in my memory, was held entirely with the public permitted complete access, televised over the internal television structure for the entire time of the conference. There were no separate conference meetings. All of the conference meetings were public. As the gentleman from New York said, the Committee on Ways and Means' website is now available. We have just filed a conference report, and under the rules, hard copies are required and hard copies are available. The constant harping about the fact that we are not bipartisan. Bipartisanship is a two-way street. The Senate had 23 Senators on this conference. Twelve of them were Republicans. Ten of them were Democrats. And one was an Independent. Of the 12 Republicans, 11 supported the conference; i.e., they signed the conference report. Of the ten Democrats, six supported the conference report, including, I might tell the Members, the minority leader of the United States Senate and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.”