Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the committee. I thank him for his kind words, but I also thank him for his leadership on this issue. We have had a great teamwork effort both between the Senators and between the staff. This isn't something that just came together a couple of weeks ago. This is something that has been worked on for about 1\1/2\ years, with pretty constant meetings on Fridays of all of the interested groups and then stakeholders. It takes a tremendous amount of work to put something like this together and have it be in a bipartisan way like this. It is largely because it came to committee. In committee we took a look at all of the amendments that were suggested, we got the people together who had very similar amendments, and they usually were able to work out something to satisfy everybody in that instance, and we came up with a bill. As Senator Harkin mentioned, it passed 96 to 1. Anytime we get something to pass, it is kind of a landmark success. But when we get something that bipartisan, it is even more landmark. We have been trying to get this bill wrapped up before the Supreme Court decision came out on health care. The reason we have been trying to do that is, who knows what it is going to say or what kind of ideas people will come up with when that happens. This is a group of 100 idea generators, so we wanted this cleared up by that time.…”