Political Quotes

“I thank the Democratic leader for yielding, and I thank the gentleman from Michigan for joining us here. As Mr. Hoyer stated at the outset, this is a very dangerous bill and a very dangerous precedent for this body and the other body and for Congress in general. It was Lincoln who said: ``A House divided cannot stand.'' And in this bill, when you pit the sick against the well, the poor against the wealthiest 1 percent, blue State against red State, small business against large corporation, you begin to see the inequity in the bill. Rich Neal, the lead Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, lamented that this was a lost opportunity--a lost opportunity because there was ample time to come together both in the committee and here on the floor to do something constructive for the country, put the Nation back to work, and resolve issues that President Obama had put forward that I know have been on the front burners of everyone's concern to get lower taxes, and greater fairness in equity across the board, but that didn't happen. Now, much is said about process, and people pooh-pooh that, but here are the facts: It was Ronald Reagan who said: ``The facts are a stubborn thing.'' Back in 1986, the last time we impacted policy of this nature, the Ways and Means Committee, in fact, had 30 hearings in the committee, 12 subcommittee hearings, 450 expert witnesses, and 26 days of markup before it came to the floor for debate.…”