Arlen Specter: “I welcome an opportunity to present these issues to students. Anyone in the balcony observing this debate, students, and…”

“I welcome an opportunity to present these issues to students. Anyone in the balcony observing this debate, students, and as the Senator from Arizona alludes to students, perhaps a more elite audience, wanting to know the theory, the philosophy, the approach, the ethics of the proposition, I welcome addressing students on this subject as I spend a good bit of my time addressing high schools, colleges, junior high schools, and even grade schools taking the message to the students about what government ought to be doing. It is a fairly common reference--not too humorous anymore--to analogize making sausage to the making of legislation. But the making of legislation is a very complicated matter. It has to take into account the accommodation of 260 million Americans and many contrary issues and many contrary differences. When the argument is raised about this is a matter turned down by the authorizing committee, the Commerce Committee, and turned down by the Governmental Affairs Committee--they are not the last word. The chairman of the Commerce Committee does not have the last word. He may have it as the Commerce Committee is organized, directed, and run. And the chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee may have the last word as to how that committee is run. But the Senate has the last word. There are 100 of us and each Senator has rights under the rules of the Senate.”