Political Quotes

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. I say to my friend, as the Republican Budget chairman said to him yesterday, I appreciate his passion on this issue. What brings us to the very best decisions that we can make in this body, Mr. Speaker, is having folks who work hard day in and day out educating themselves on the issues. They can bring the very best case for the American people to the floor. And that's why I would ask my friend whether or not he believes it actually helps that debate to get involved in some of those rhetorical feats of mind, I guess we would call them, because he knows as well as I know that under the law of the land, in 2002, food stamp benefits, SNAP benefits, would have gone up by about 40 percent over the last 10 years, and Republicans and Democrats came together over the last decade and increased those benefits 270 percent, Mr. Speaker. Now, this proposal suggests that instead of going up 270 percent, we allow those benefits to go up 260 percent. That's the draconian cut. We see that in the same rhetoric in the student loan program, Mr. Speaker. Everyone in this body knows the law of the land was that student loan rates were at 6.8 percent--a below-market rate of 6.8 percent. They were lowered for a very small fraction of the student population for a very temporary period of time to 3.4 percent, and the law now hasn't gone back to 6.8 percent, to standard levels.…”