Political Quotes

“I yield 3 minutes to the ranking member on the Trade Subcommittee of Ways and Means, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott). (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, we are all proud Members of the United States Congress. We consider this the preeminent legislative body in the world that sets the standard for how the world should create laws and how we should govern our country. We believe in the rule of law. We talk about it all the time. We're for the rule of law. Well, that is the nub of this argument about why so many of us will vote against the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Now, we all know the horrors. And we'll hear them repeated again and again. But the fact is that we forced the government of Colombia-- President Obama did--to sit down and write a Labor Action Plan in which they said what they would do. We had listened for a couple of years to the previous administration, the Uribe administration; promise, promise, promise--nothing happened. So this President said, I want it in writing. Write down a labor agreement. It set out the precise steps that Colombia had to take to address the particular problems faced in that country; for example, steps Colombia could take to detect sham subcontractors and punish employers for using them to suppress worker rights. {time} 1250 We went down to very specific things. Why was that?…”