Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about my friend and colleague, Steve Israel, who is retiring from Congress after 16 years. We came into Congress together and have been the best of friends and brothers ever since. Now, the last time I mentioned Steve Israel on the House floor was after making a bet with Steve over the Dodgers-Mets series, a bet that I lost, and I had to sing the ``Meet the Mets'' song on the House floor. I want to assure all my colleagues that is never going to happen again either on the playing field or on the House floor. When we came to Congress together, we were given a book, like all incoming freshmen, called ``Charting the Course.'' This is a book that basically says that there are three different models of being a Congressman. You can be the policy expert or you can be the political animal or you can be the pothole Congressman who is focused on district needs and excellent at meeting the needs of constituents, but the gist of the book is you can't be all three. You have to pick where you are going to make your specialization, and if you try to do all three, you will end up not doing any one of them very well. Steve Israel proved the premise of that book wrong because he proved to be superlative at each and every aspect of being a Member of Congress. On policy, Steve developed an expertise in energy policy and became a leading champion of the development of renewable sources of energy.…”