Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, I thank my partner from Utah for his exceptional work in terms of putting together a repeal and replace program and say, as I have in the course of the afternoon, that essentially the proposal I have talked about here today could more properly be called the Hatch-Kyl plan because the underlying bill is essentially the outstanding work done by the Senator from Utah, Chairman Camp, Chairman Upton, a number of Democrats, and essentially takes as a pay-for what our former colleague, Senator Kyl, a conservative by anybody's calculation had in mind.

We are going to be doing a lot of bipartisan work in the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Hatch and I, as I touched on earlier, are already working on the tax extenders. I simply thought that the ideas of Senator Hatch and Senator Kyl, two conservatives who I admire, fit quite well with the kind of bipartisan approach that you heard many Senators on this side of the aisle talk about this afternoon, such as Senator Cardin and Senator Warner.

At the end of the day, I guess I will put my final remarks in the context of what Senator Coburn, our friend from Oklahoma, said. He essentially said: Do not put off until tomorrow what you can do today. The good work that Senator Hatch has done on this--I was not the point person for the Democrats at that time; it was Chairman Baucus--I think highlights what we could be moving on today.

The pay-for that our former colleague Senator Kyl from Arizona put forward several years ago is just as valid as it once was. So we will continue, as Senator Hatch has described this afternoon, to work very closely together. I am hopeful that here in the next couple of days colleagues will also see it on a vital matter relating to jobs because the two of us are working together on tax extenders, which is for promoting innovation in our economy: the research and development credit, renewable energy, jobs for veterans.

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