Brian Jones: “I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I came here in 1995 with Newt Gingrich--at that time, the largest class, until this…”

“I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I came here in 1995 with Newt Gingrich--at that time, the largest class, until this last one. I had served in the North Carolina House of Representatives for 10 years. I thought I knew a little something about Congress, but those first few months that we were here we had the Contract with America and we were changing the way we did things in Washington and the things we did in this country. I got to meet Jay Pierson. Because, quite frankly, I couldn't figure out what I was doing up here. We would come in and work until 10, 11, 12:00 at night and I would see this gentleman with a mustache that seemed to know the leadership, whether it was Newt Gingrich or another Speaker, and always seemed to have the ear of that Speaker. I couldn't quite figure out who this person was. So over a period of time, I reached out and we started chatting and talked about the different things of what was happening on the floor and what Members were doing, especially we freshmen. But what really seemed to tie us together was we both played basketball. I didn't go as far as Jay did. I think Jay played varsity basketball at his college in California. I played a little freshman basketball at NC State. But the ACC got us together talking about basketball. You can't always talk about policy here on the floor of the House. If you did, you'd go crazy. So Jay and I had that little time together to talk about ACC basketball.…”