Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Oklahoma for yielding me the time. Madam Speaker, the Rules Committee has a tough job, but it is interesting to hear folks down here talking about both their agreement on tax reform and deficits and their agreement about what a rule ought to look like. I have kind of gotten a little bit of both of their passions with me today, Madam Speaker, because Ways and Means bills do have to come to the floor under a closed rule. The way the rules work, if you have an open rule, anything that is relevant to the underlying bill, you can discuss, so when you bring a tax bill to the floor, suddenly, the entire Tax Code becomes available for amendment, and you can imagine what a brouhaha that would be. I would enjoy that debate. I would thoroughly enjoy that debate, but it would never, ever end. That is not so with our spending bills. When our spending bills come to the floor, they come under a completely open process, so that we can examine the underlying spending. Just to take folks through the Rules Committee process a little bit, Madam Speaker, what we did here is we waived the CutGo provision in the rules. There are a lot of focus groups going on around the Chamber right now about how we should change the rules to make the system work better. Sometimes, in the Rules Committee, we end up waiving some of the rules to make the system work better.…”