Orrin Hatch: “before turning to the issue of the moment, I want to thank my dear friend for his good remarks here on the floor of the…”

“before turning to the issue of the moment, I want to thank my dear friend for his good remarks here on the floor of the Senate. He is a great leader, a great human being, and he certainly outlined, I think in a fair way, some of the problems and some of the solutions we might have here on the floor. But before turning to the issue of the moment, the need to restore the Nation's fiscal stability by reducing our deficits and debt, I want to return to a matter I discussed on the floor yesterday, and that is the FAA reauthorization bill. I must respond to some of the comments made by two of my colleagues earlier today regarding one of the major sticking points in our efforts to pass the FAA reauthorization bill. Their arguments are, to put it quite simply, fallacious and cannot go unanswered. As you might expect, these comments were regarding the provision in the House bill affecting the way votes are counted in union elections in the airline industry. My colleagues, the senior Senator from West Virginia and the junior Senator from Iowa, characterize the House's actions as some sort of radical endeavor, a change that lacks justification and common sense. In fact, the Senator from West Virginia even argued that the House's provisions would ``undo 75 years of labor law.'' These were his exact words. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.…”