There was no better way to spend an evening than to hear my brother swapping Irish stories with Tip. Jack loved him, and so did all the Kennedys. I'm… - Ted Kennedy

We had conversations with Mel Laird about how we were going to proceed. He had basically the concept of pay-or-play, which we would grab today if we had that opportunity, which meant that you either have an insurance program for your people or you pay into a fund. That concept is used in Europe in their industry, not only for health but also for training programs. They have training programs with the requirement that you either have to train a certain percentage of your workers in a continuing training program, or you have to pay into a fund that will continue to train them, and so you have an ongoing and continuing training program. That was what we called the school-to-work program, which we actually implemented here during the [William] Clinton Administration. But the only way we could get it passed was if we sunsetted it, and we sunsetted it, and the Republicans wouldn’t vote to continue it, which was a good program. Now we’re into the ’70s, where Nixon gets impeached, and so that whole effort collapses.

All of those Americans are better off today because of Tip O'Neill. When his political opponents tried to make him a symbol of the past, they succeeded only in turning him into an even greater national hero than before. He was the glue that held the Democratic Party together in the Reagan years, and no one could have done it better. He was also the only man we knew in Washington who was bigger than the budget deficit. One thing for sure about Tip O'Neill--when you saw him, no one ever said, "Where's the beef." And no one ever said that about his bedrock beliefs either. We loved to compare our diets and joke about them. People often tell me that I have to lose more weight if I want to stay in public life. It seems that they don't care about my vision of the country, as long as I can see my toes. I told that to Tip once, and he said "What are toes?"

President Nixon has told us, without question, that we seek no military victory, that we seek only peace. How then can we justify sending our boys against a hill a dozen times or more, until soldiers themselves question the madness of the action? The assault on "Hamburger Hill" is only symptomatic of a mentality and a policy that requires immediate attention. American boys are too valuable to be sacrificed for a false sense of military pride.