I was part of that process too. Looking back at it, I think one of the approaches we had last time, and that I wouldn't recommend doing again, was that we wanted to have a single report. We went through all of the rules. We essentially were trying to see how many rules we could get agreement on and whether we could work it out. On some things we achieved success, and on some things we clearly weren't going to achieve success and we put them aside. But on the many items where we might have achieved success, we talked and talked and talked.
Basically, I think what happened was that the deadline we had to make our report dictated the amount of time we put in. It was a version of Parkinson's law: the debate filled the available time.
It was a different model. We got as much low-hanging fruit as we could manage. We got the easy stuff. Standing on our tippytoes, we thought we might be able to reach the stuff, but we did a little hop and we couldn't get it. That's my apple metaphor here. It was all under the assumption that the picnic is over at a certain time, but until that happens, we can keep on going.
I think this time I would suggest a different approach. If we can take an item and resolve it, then we should just have a little report and send it off to the House. This committee, of course, is always generating little tiny reports, far more reports than any other committee, and far briefer reports. I think that would be appropriate. Then we seek the concurrence of the House. Presumably we would have an agreement that any report we're issuing here will be concurred in. Obviously that's subject to the parties agreeing, but it's not to turn that into an all-day concurrence debate. It's not an excuse for that. It's just to get concurred in. Then we can get that rule in place and move along.