But he had argued that more groundwork needed to be laid in lower-level talks before a useful summit meeting could be held.
"There's groundwork that needs to be done in Texas that simply hasn't been done," Julián Castro, a Democrat and the mayor of San Antonio, told me during an interview on CNN.
The groundwork that needs to be done is substantial".
"There is obviously a great deal of groundwork that needs to be done," Ms. Bellamy said.
The groundwork for that process needs to be laid through the winter, he says, in order to forestall another season of fighting next spring.
The Abstract Expressionists were laying the groundwork for their movement and like any "young painter I needed to be in the middle of what was happening, immerse myself.
That sort of laid the groundwork for the endgame, but also there are things that need to be wrapped up.
"And we cannot exclude that different approaches may need to be implemented for the first years following the expiry of the current regulation while laying the groundwork for more sustainable long-term solutions.
Congress wants a radically different census -- accurate but lower cost -- but it isn't willing to invest in the groundwork needed to reach that goal.
