Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, you know, it's often said around this place that nobody cares about process. It's only the substance of the policy. But the process lends itself to the substance. And bad process equals bad policy, especially when it's done over and over again. Now we've seen over the past couple of years a shrinking of the ability of the minority party to actually come to the floor, offer the amendments it would like to offer, actually have an impact on the policy debate. Now, that's process. But it has an impact on the policy. Over time, if a majority simply asserts its rights under the House rules to minimize debate or to have a vote without having a vote, to deem something through, if you do that kind of thing continually, you're going to get a bad product. And I would suggest that the health care reform bill that we will vote on, maybe, or we will deem later this weekend, is a bad product, and it's partly because of a flawed process. Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. You want to talk about process? Over the past year and a half the House held nearly 100 hours of hearings. In 83 hours of committee markups we heard from 181 witnesses, both Democrat and Republican. Two hundred thirty-nine amendments were considered, and 121 were adopted. I think that's a pretty good process. I reserve my time.”