Jay Rockefeller: “I wish to make a few comments on the health care bill, which, in and of itself, interests me because we are here doing…”

“I wish to make a few comments on the health care bill, which, in and of itself, interests me because we are here doing FAA. If I remember correctly, I stood here at excessive length and gave a speech about the importance of the FAA bill. Kay Bailey Hutchison did the same. Then, all of a sudden, here we are on health. That is very interesting because we have sort of made ourselves entirely transparent. Anybody can offer amendments. The leader doesn't fill up the tree, so it is open. And what happens is, immediately everybody pops in with their favorite amendment. I don't resent that; I just say it is an interesting phenomenon which is showing itself on the very first day. I think it is very important--and I mentioned this in my earlier comments--when you say the American people don't want this bill, there was a period of time when that was correct because the bill was made in front of everybody on C-SPAN--whoever watches it, but enough people did because a lot of people were interested in what was happening--and it wasn't a very pretty process.”