David Thomas: “in this coming session--which is going to be relatively short, as it always is on election years, but particularly this…”

“in this coming session--which is going to be relatively short, as it always is on election years, but particularly this year--we have to focus if we intend to accomplish things. I hope we do. As is often the case in election years, there are times when people are more interested in creating the issue than they are in resolving the issue. I think we will see a considerable amount of that, of course, going out towards the Presidential election and trying to find the issues the party will be for--which is all part of the system. But I am hopeful we can concentrate and focus on the issues that we think are most important. We have had some experience, unfortunately in the last several weeks, and certainly even last year, that quite often the minority chose to bring up issues they knew would not be resolved but brought them up continuously to diffuse the issues on which we have been working. In this body, that is easy. One person very readily can hold up things, unless we can get 60 votes to do something different. In any event, I am hopeful that will not be the case. We are going to focus on some things that we have decided upon. This will be more refined as time goes on, but certainly education will be one. The issue of education, of course, is not whether we try to improve it, but how we fund those improvements. I do not believe that we should have one-size-fits-all regulations that come from some bureaucracy in Washington.”