Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so. There are a number of topics that are on my mind, and generally for me, Mr. Speaker, it flows from the previous debate. As I listened to the deliberation and the dialogue and I will say the cooperative nature that came between the chairman and the ranking member of the Select Committee on Intelligence here this evening, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that kind of dialogue, and I think our Founding Fathers would be very pleased if they could see that this work that is being done, a lot of it behind closed doors in the Select Committee on Intelligence, is being done in a deliberative process, sometimes in a classified setting, but often in a nonpartisan environment. It seems as though, when the television cameras come on, the partisan nature of this United States Congress is amplified by the media's coverage of the events that take place, and when the doors get closed, we get serious about policy in a different kind of a way. We are no longer messaging to America or simply having that kind of debate and dialogue that our Founding Fathers envisioned, and I don't know that it is particularly a phenomenon that is unique to the United States Congress.…”