Sam Farr: “And look what has happened this year and last year. What we have seen here and why we even need to have a reform week is…”

“And look what has happened this year and last year. What we have seen here and why we even need to have a reform week is some of the abuses of this institution that have been carried out by this leadership, lobbyists literally sitting and writing the bills, not the paid professional staff of Congress. Lobbyists and former Members who are lobbyists being able to be at the dais during a debate, the fact that the attack has been on sort of the monied interests, the money interests that would rather cut it out for us rather than preserve it, the money interests that would rather pollute our drinking water than clean it up, the money interests that would rather keep minimum wage from being passed and signed into law, the money interests that would like to make sure that welfare reform is all about just making people work, which is fine, but who is going to provide the jobs out there? So you begin to see that there is a very conservative agenda building in Congress, and that agenda is only thwarted by the fact that this room is made up of a awful lot of diverse people who come here with viewpoints different from just a one standard cookie-cutter financial bottom line ``what is in it for me,'' and that has been able to make the Congress the vibrant place that it is.…”