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Every Thursday morning at 9:15, we had a Whip meeting in the Whip Office.
And Tip O’Neill would chair it as Majority Whip. 

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The Speaker and the Leader would be there, 
the chairman of the Democratic Caucus, and we had 20 whips. 

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The country was divided, I believe, into 19 zones. I think New York had two, 
so there were 20—and divided regionally, geographically. 

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And I think there were like 10 to 25 members in each zone, 
and these were the leaders. 

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They were elected by their Members in their zones, and they came to 
the Whip organization—they were a part of the Whip organization. 

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I don’t think we had deputy whips, and chief deputy whips, 
and assistant whips then. That came later. But—

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the Leader is responsible, the Majority Leader 
is responsible for scheduling floor legislation. And so—

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Leader Boggs would come, the Majority Leader would come, 
with a schedule for the following week on this Thursday morning, and—

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the Speaker would be there, and would talk about the bills, 
get input from the whips . . . Are there any issues with these bills? 

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Do we have a problem with them? Is there a controversy here? 
Are these bills that we should take a whip count? 

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Do we—are we going to have a problem? 
Do we want to make sure we have the votes? We never wanted to—

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the majority party never wants to bring anything to the floor 
unless it’s sure it has the votes. 

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I don’t care whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans. 
They’ve got to have the votes. 

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You know, you’re not going to bring it to the floor—
and the leadership controls the floor scheduling—the majority leadership.