Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman. Madam Speaker, slamming the door on the legislative process. My taking 10 minutes to talk about this rule is slamming the door on the legislative process. How is that? What I am here to talk about is how the door has been slammed on the legislative process. The inability of Members to come and offer amendments to appropriation bills to try and save money is what is slamming the door on the legislative process. It has nothing to do with somebody's standing up and claiming time to speak against the rule. So that is just baffling to me and to anybody out there, listening, when they learn that I offered 11 amendments. There were 461 earmarks which were costing nearly $330 million. I should note, this year, Republicans have taken a moratorium. So, of those 461 earmarks, only six were sponsored by Republican Members--six out of 431. I commend my Republican colleagues for the position that has been taken this year. Let me just read a list of the ones that I will be challenging today: I was allowed to choose four out of the 11 I submitted. Now, I could have submitted a lot more and could have tried to have been dilatory about this, but I said, I'll offer just as many as I would if that were the number that I could actually offer coming to the floor. But I was only allowed four. {time} 1040 I should mention many of my Republican colleagues who offered earmark amendments were not given any, not any. Some of them had a great case to make here.…”