Mark Hatfield: “I want to call attention to a matter relating to one of our staff people, Pat McCann, who is the staff director for the…”

“I want to call attention to a matter relating to one of our staff people, Pat McCann, who is the staff director for the majority party. He is a very interesting person who has been on this committee, the transportation subcommittee, for 13 years. It is illustrative of another matter, and that is how our committee must operate on a bipartisan basis. When we bring a bill to the floor we have to have comanagers, in which the ranking member and whoever he or she may be, a Democrat and a Republican, and the Chair, have to have agreed to the bill and therefore present a united front. I say this is unusual about committees in the Senate, but we are the only committee that has to report bills by law. We have to keep this country going and, therefore, we have to report 13 bills, come whatever may. I happened to be chairing the Appropriations Committee in a previous cycle, from 1981 to 1987. I, at that time, had an opportunity to hire on the committee Pat McCann, as the Republican majority at that time. But subsequent chairmen of that committee, the full committee, Senator Stennis and Senator Byrd, followed the same pattern that I followed and that is that we do not wipe out our staff in each election cycle, because they are truly professionals, serving both sides of the committee.”