Political Quotes

“I appreciate my colleague for his words. A lot of folks, Mr. Speaker, have the burden of working with folks whose motives they question. I have the great benefit of working on the Rules Committee with a team of folks whose motives I absolutely never question because I know folks are operating from their heart and from their constituents' best interest. Let me say, because we talk so much about productivity down here on this floor, Mr. Speaker, The Washington Times did an article earlier this year on productivity in the House and the Senate. They called it ``the futility index''--the futility of all the efforts in the body. They said the Senate ranked number one of all the years that they've been keeping records; less activity going on in the Senate by a large margin than ever before. Then they came to the House and they said, you know what, it's true the House hasn't passed a lot of bills. As you know, Mr. Speaker, we outlawed all of those silly commemorative bills that were not about the people's business but were about folks and their campaigns. Those no longer come to the floor. We eliminated a whole portion of that that was not about the people's business. What The Washington Times said was this: that we had more time in this House in session than all but 10 Congresses since they began keeping records and that we had more debate in this House, Mr.…”