Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the so-called SMARTER Act, the Standard Merger and Acquisition Reviews Through Equal Rules Act, which really should--I mean, it is a misnomer. We should rename this bill. Instead of that, we should rename it the Sadly More Acronyms for Really Terrible and Esoteric Requirements Act. {time} 0945 I know a lot of people around the country are wondering: Well, what is this all about? It must be important that they are doing this. I will tell you what is important about it. It is a piece of legislation that would impact the largest and most consequential of corporate mergers, of multinational corporate mergers. Those things have to go through a review process with our Federal Trade Commission. Also, the Department of Justice has an antitrust division. What this piece of legislation would do would be to gut one of the agency's--the FTC's--ability to oversee and deal with merger review issues that affect the largest and most consequential of their mergers, of these big corporate mergers. Does this piece of legislation benefit the people? Or does it benefit the 1 percent of large multinational corporations that, I guess, need help avoiding regulatory authority by our government? Well, it looks like that is what it is. It is something that is going to help out big business at a time when people in this country are very angry about the fact that the playing field is not level.…”