Orrin Hatch: “I am not willing to redo this bill because the conference is over. A vast majority has supported it in the House--a huge…”

“I am not willing to redo this bill because the conference is over. A vast majority has supported it in the House--a huge majority--and a bipartisan majority on the conference. But I am certainly willing to look at it. If we need to modify what we have done here today, I will certainly look at that. I feel badly the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts feels he was misled, but I do not see how he was misled. I can see there was an ambiguity if one did not look at the whole record. He may not have been there when we decided to use Chairman Sensenbrenner's language, which was clear and specific. I thought mine was clear, but Chairman Sensenbrenner's language was more clear than mine. I think everybody there understood. The distinguished Senator from Massachusetts and the distinguished Senator from Vermont, the ranking member, the Democrat leader on the committee, refused to sign the conference report over perhaps this misunderstanding, but it is a misunderstanding, not a desire by me to do something that is improper. I thank the distinguished Senator for his comments here today. Those are good points he made, and we will see what we can do. Let me make a couple other comments before I finish. Let me provide some additional examples of sentencing departure abuse and why we want to change this and why this bill makes a very good step in the right direction.”