Political Quotes

“I want to underscore how important it is that you have seen a remarkable degree of coordination and bipartisan cooperation in the House on the second stimulus package. Because you and I both know as acutely as anybody in this Chamber, because we were out there campaigning for change here in Washington, that folks were sort of sick and tired of everything being a fight here, everything being lined up as Republicans against Democrats, conservatives against liberals, X against Y, A against B. That was kind of the order of the day here during the last 12 years before the election of 2006. Everything was going to be a partisan fight, and there really wasn't going to be any real effort to reach across the aisle. That's changed. You and I weren't here, but we know what the perception was from the outside. And the perception, and I think Ms. Wasserman Schultz will testify, that was backed up by reality. Now, cooperation that you see on the economic stimulus package doesn't mean that you still don't fight for what you believe in when you have an honest-to-goodness disagreement, and we are going to talk a little bit tonight about some fights that are about to come, some lines in the sand that we, as Democrats, are prepared to draw with the President and his Republican followers here in the House.”