Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time. I want to respect the chairman. The chairman is correct. The Natural Resources Committee, of which I am a proud member, appears to be very busy passing bills. But let's be clear: the Republican majority, time and time again, acts unilaterally, alone, without meaningful cooperation with the minority in this legislation, in the House, and with the Senate and with the administration. On suspensions, the majority insists on ridiculous limitations that prevent consideration of many measures designed to conserve lands, and, of course, they insist on a more than 3:1 ratio of their legislation to the minority's legislation, to ours. No wonder the number of suspensions is lagging behind what we have done in the past. As to the bills we have considered under a rule, most of them are almost identical repeats of the bills that were passed in the House last Congress, but because they were opposed by the Senate and the administration, they went nowhere. To keep passing the same, dead-on-arrival bills over and over again to make the committee look busy should not be mistaken for legislating. The idea is to work on legislation that can bring bills of a bipartisan nature, that the Senate will deal with and, more importantly, that the administration will sign.…”