To vote or not to vote

“I don’t care which bill gets signed.”

I was talking to Senator Delores Kelley.

The subject was green jobs.

She is the sponsor of the Senate crossfile.

“You shouldn’t wait for my bill to pass the House and then get out of the Senate Rules Committee,” I continued. “The sooner the Senate Finance Committee acts on the issue the better.”

Under my longstanding newsletter test, if I can legitimately take credit for moving public policy in the right direction, my name doesn’t have to be first on the sponsor line of a bill.

----

I was about to speak on my burial bill before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.

I always try to begin my testimony with a phrase or sentence that will get the attention of my colleagues. “It’s the rhetorical equivalent of hitting someone in the middle of the forehead with a two-by-four,” I tell my students.

I thought about quoting from the graveyard scene in Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yoric, I knew him well.”

But the committee chair said no one had signed up in opposition to my bill. So I kept it short and simple.