Christopher Shays: “I have to say when you brought out the rule on the congressional accountability bill which was to get Congress to live…”

“I have to say when you brought out the rule on the congressional accountability bill which was to get Congress to live by all the laws that we impose on everyone else, you were not speaking for the freshmen, you were speaking for the majority in this Congress and the vast majority of American people who knew it was ludicrous, immoral, and harmful for Congress not to be under the laws that we impose on the rest of the country. Our Founding Fathers, as you pointed out in that early debate, and I have used your quote since, our Founding Fathers, Madison in particular, and in his Paper 57, basically said, of course, the protection to the people would be that of course Congress would live under the same laws it imposes on the people and it would not impose laws on itself that it could not live by. Little did Madison know that for about a 30-year period, Congress did not want to live under certain laws but was willing to impose the laws on everyone else.”