Political Quotes

“And I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Perlmutter), my friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. We had to hustle over here today, Mr. Speaker. You were already here, and I appreciate your timely beginning of the House, but this is a different kind of day. Ordinarily, we have more 1 minutes, more folks celebrating high school teachers, local newspaper folks, and local philanthropic efforts, but as you might imagine, there are other things going on on the Hill today. That is unfortunate because I come down here today not with a heavy heart that I often come with, from a Rules Committee perspective. Mr. Speaker, the Rules Committee is in charge of deciding whether or not to allow amendments, what to schedule for the floor. As a member of the minority, there are four of us up there on the Rules Committee with nine members in the majority, so we lose a lot. The time for bipartisan partnership happens before a bill gets to the Rules Committee. Yesterday, what we saw transpire in the Rules Committee, Mr. Speaker, was not at all unprecedented. It is just not as common as I wish it were. That is that the committees of jurisdiction were working all the way up until the eleventh hour to come together on a bipartisan solution so that we wouldn't have to jam something through the Rules Committee. I see my friend from Connecticut has come down to the floor. Mr.…”