Nick Rahall: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. I asked for this time only because the chairman referred to opening these hearings…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I asked for this time only because the chairman referred to opening these hearings in my hometown of Beckley, West Virginia, which he did, and I appreciate that very much and the many other hearings he held across the country. Yet the question is, you have to learn from these hearings, and you have to incorporate that which you learn from these hearings into the bill that you end up finally writing, and I'm not sure that was done from what the gentleman heard from my home State. In addition, which the gentleman from Massachusetts referred to, as to the bipartisanship of the other body, we all know in this town and across the country how hard it is to get that other body to agree on anything. Even if it were a resolution saying, ``I love Mother,'' it's hard to get 60 votes over there for anything. Yet they got 72 votes for a bipartisan transportation bill. They got half of the Republican Members of that other body to support a bipartisan transportation bill. We have tried, as the gentleman from Massachusetts knows, to bring that up in the Rules Committee, to make it in order. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired. Mr. McGOVERN. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.”