Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. I'm glad my colleague from Michigan just spoke, and I think, laid it out very clearly what's before us. He said, this is the eighth time and we call it an emergency. This is the hurricane season. I assume that if there are eight hurricanes, that, when the damage is done the eighth time, we'll call it for what it is, an emergency. So the fact that this is the eighth time, first of all, it shows that under Presidents of both parties we've extended unemployment insurance in an unfunded way, as an emergency. But I think what this shows is that, indeed, it is an emergency for numerous families. Essentially, the minority is looking for cover. This is an emergency within statutory PAYGO that passed this Congress, so we are following it. The Senate rejected it last night, short one vote, only because of the death of Senator Byrd, and there were only two Republicans. His position may be filled soon as we mourn him, and then this bill can pass the Senate. And hopefully there will be more than two Republicans, the rest not standing in the way. There's been some reference here to job loss. I just want to repeat: during the 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a loss of 673,000 private sector jobs. In the first 5 months of 2010 alone, there's been a gain of 495,000 private sector jobs. So, even that excuse won't work, nor the notion of the deficit, when those who are trying to invoke it helped to create most of it.…”