Political Quotes

“I believe I am the only speaker from my side. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote against this rule. Almost 200 germane amendments, substantive amendments were not made in order. Again, I am used to, as a Democrat, having the Republicans shut me out every chance they get; but to my Republican colleagues who were shut out on their legitimate amendments, the germane amendments, stand with us and send a signal to your leadership that this closed process is unacceptable. My colleague, Mr. Byrne, talks about this being an open process. We must have different definitions of openness because when almost 200 amendments are shut out--and, by the way, on top of all of that, there were really kind of unusual shenanigans in the Rules Committee about self-executing amendments so that we don't have an opportunity to even vote up or down on them--that is not an open process. That is something we should try to move away from. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I am going to close as I began by saying to my colleagues to please vote against this rule because it does not make in order the opportunity for us to be able to debate the issues of war and peace when it comes to Iraq and Syria. We have been involved in Syria and again in Iraq now for almost 2 years. By the way, we left Iraq not because President Obama wanted us to, but because the Iraqi Parliament voted us to leave.…”