John Hope Bryant: “The process by which we have arrived at this early hour, after having quit so late last night, is not one that, in my…”

“The process by which we have arrived at this early hour, after having quit so late last night, is not one that, in my view, reflects well upon this institution. I am disappointed both in the leadership of the Republican Party and the Democrats for allowing this to take place. The fact of the matter is, the full committee, after months of work, months and months of work, reported a bill out that was designed to ensure that as we begin to see competition in areas that had never before seen competition, we would see the strongest gorilla on the block, the Bell competitors, enter into competition on the basis of a checklist that would make sure that they did not enter into it in such a way that they squeezed out the tremendously beneficial value to the consumer of the long distance competitive industry that has developed over the last 10 or 11 years since the AT&T monopoly broke up in the beginning. Mr. Chairman, after the committee met and did our work, suddenly out of nowhere comes this amendment that has been created out of public view, been created in the back rooms, been created without organized public input, and led by the chairman of the committee and with the complicity of the chairman of the subcommittee and leaders on our side as well.”