Why is this man smiling?

Last week's cover of CQ Weekly displayed a large picture of the Chairman, who despite recent political struggles over the future of his major bill, was still smiling. After reading the article, which gave a fairly detailed account of the Chairman's history with the committee as well as an overview of the bill and the years of work that lead to its creation, I started to consider the amount of time spent creating bills that never become law. From my observations, its a massive amount of time spent researching, writing, holding hearings, meetings, and mark-ups with the hope that, against the odds, the bill will become law. At first it was a bit disheartening to realize that all the time and effort that the committee staff put into the creation of the bill may not amount to anything. But then I realized that its refective of the deliberative nature that makes Congress so great. Not everything can become law, but pretty much anything has a small chance- and its that chance that keeps the Chairman smiling.