Political Quotes

“I come to the floor on this. I want to make sure that people know that I am an original cosponsor of the underlying bill. I support the underlying bill. I have signed on to every piece of pro-life legislation that I can find, and I came here to save as many lives as we can. My question out here is: What do you have to do to break out of the straightjacket of incrementalism and get to actually saving numbers of lives? My hat is off to Jill Stanek. She brought this bill a long way. We are going to honor her today on the vote on the final passage of the bill. But I am putting up a procedural vote, a ``no'' vote on the rule today, because we have 170 cosponsors on the Heartbeat bill. I have gone to every meeting. Nobody brought this bill up as the premier bill, and somehow, one outside organization came in and lobbied to put this ahead. It had 61 cosponsors instead of 170. There has been no hearing. I am for the bill. Attach them both together. Let's save all the lives we can. But if nobody has the courage to step up and say what is wrong with this process, then we're never going to fix the process. So I am going to vote ``no'' on the rule. I won't ask anybody else to do that. I will vote ``yes'' on the underlying bill, and I will go back to work to save as many lives as we possibly can. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman from Iowa: the process stinks. I reserve the balance of my time.”