On the recordDecember 31, 2012
there is a lot of buzzing going on around the Capitol today. Here we are on New Year's Eve, and so many of us had hoped we would have an agreement that would be really a big agreement, a long-term agreement that we would have liked to have had finished maybe by September, certainly by October, but that was not to be. In fact, as we saw in the elections of this year, our country is divided and our House here is divided as well. So it has been hard to come to terms. It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest, because when we have opinions, when we have free speech, when we have elections that put a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican majority in the House, we know there is not going to be a clear and precise path. But in the end, it is the best because we have all expressed our opinions and everyone has been heard. We have had countless meetings in the last few weeks trying to see where people could give and where they couldn't. I have said from the beginning that I am optimistic because I think our democracy will work in the end. From what I am hearing from the different leaders, we are close to an agreement. We are not there, but it is a starting point and certainly a point at which there is already some agreement. It may not seem as though it should be so hard, but once we do have the framework of an agreement, there are a lot of decisions that have to be made.…
