Political Quotes

“Well, can you believe it, we are finally here. After several years of waiting for these trade agreements to come to the Congress, it looks as though we are going to be able to vote on them, pass them, and send them to the President for his signature, and they will become law. Quite frankly, I thought soon after May 10, 2007, we would be voting on the Colombia trade agreement because President Bush was anxious to send it to the Hill. But the Democrats took over the Congress after the 2006 election, and the way it was negotiated by the Bush administration wasn't good enough. There wasn't enough negotiation to go far enough on labor and environment, so the new Democratic- controlled Congress said we have to do more on those negotiations for environment and labor. So more was renegotiated, and on May 10, 2007, there was a news conference announcing a bipartisan result between the Bush administration and the Democratic Congress on an agreement with Colombia on better environment and labor issues that had been reached. So a bipartisan agreement, particularly when you have a Democratic Congress and a Republican President, you would have expected that right away we would be having at least Colombia up here. At that time, South Korea wasn't completely negotiated. But the other party turned into a protectionist party and so nothing has happened until now.…”