Political Quotes

“Thank you for yielding, Madam Ranking Member. Madam Speaker, I rise today to give apologies to all of the employees of the Homeland Security Department. In watching this, I hope that they understand what is really going on. This is not a battle about the process, the gamesmanship that we need time to work out at conference. We don't go to conference on a brink of a disaster. We have had a year to deal with this. In fact, we passed this bill. What this is about is a bigger game going on in town. It is about whack-a-mole with the President. They sue him; they say they don't want to support any of his proposals; they cut, squeeze, and trim his appropriations; and they hold up his government appointments. But now the real story shifts when we see that the Republicans in this House even more than disliking the President dislike the Senate. The Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill which we could have passed. There were enough votes if we had brought that to the floor to pass it. If we had passed that comprehensive immigration bill, we wouldn't even be here today. This wouldn't even be a discussion. The irony for all you Homeland Security employees is that the House is taking care of itself. The leadership, with their details and all of the wonderful Capitol Police we have around here, they are all taken care of because we don't pay for them out of our Homeland Security bill; we pay for them out of our own legislative branch bill, and that was passed.…”