Political Quotes

“we say that we are happy with the crafting by the Committee on Rules of the procedure by which this debate will go forward. We should all be happy with it because it reflects in a grand way the bipartisan manner in which this entire issue was promulgated from the start. In the last term the cosponsorship alone of a vehicle in that stage of these proceedings was substantially bipartisan. The votes that were undertaken, both in the House and in the general debate and then later in the conference report, reflected a gigantic bipartisan vote, 300 votes plus. By any measure, that turns out to be bipartisan. Now when we reintroduced the bill this year, it has, still does have, substantial numbers of the minority as part of the cosponsorship. It is, indeed, a bipartisan vehicle in this term that we are visiting. On top of that, in the hearings that were held, some eight of them by the subcommittee and with over 70 witnesses to supplement the some 50 or 60 witnesses that we had last term, all of them gave testimony from which was drawn here and there special features which we put into the bill showing not just bipartisanship thus far but nonpartisanship; that is, drawing from the witnesses' actual phraseology and suggestions that became part of this bill. That makes it a balanced, well-apportioned bill from a policy standpoint and from a partisan standpoint, if we want to allow it to be described as that.”