Political Quotes

“Thank you very much. I thank my friend from Tennessee for yielding. I just have to say, for folks who haven't been following your short 15 months here closely, they don't usually put freshmen on the Ways and Means Committee. They just don't. I mean, this is not a meritocracy. This is an organization that's often run by tenures, a little like a labor union shop. You put in your time. You play by the rules. You eventually get promoted. Yet, when this freshman class came in and when you looked at the kind of challenges that were facing the Nation, they looked at folks like you, Mrs. Black, who have invested a career in health care--not in talking about health care, but in implementing health care--they said, Where can we make folks the most valuable? I hear that time and time again back home. Folks say, Rob, why is it all the bureaucrats are making all the decisions in Washington, D.C.? What I get to say to them is, You know, that might have been the way it was, but today we have folks like Dr. Bucshon, like Dr. Heck, and we have folks like Diane Black, who are in the places where they can bring their real-life experiences to bear. I listened to my colleague, Mike Kelly, talk about how folks just discount job creators as they're passing legislation like this. You wonder why it is we're in the worst recession in my lifetime. We have folks who you could consult. We have folks that you could speak with. We have folks whose advice you could seek and employ.…”