Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--and I am delighted he is the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--for yielding. I rise in support of the conference report of the Customs bill. It has got many provisions within it which I am happy about and happy to support. The currency manipulation provision is one of them. I am pleased to be here to be able to say that there were those that had significant heartburn over trade promotion authority. I am one of them. There were two provisions that I so badly wanted to be included within the TPA legislation, because I have a bit of a history of working to keep the immigration components out of trade deals. Congress needs to be passing immigration law, not trade negotiators. Well, that language is an amendment that is in here in the conference report, along with language that prohibits the negotiations under trade promotion authority on climate change. So we are protected from executive decisions imposed upon this Congress and a usurpation of article I authority by two pieces of language in here: No negotiations under TPA can include climate change under this language; and no negotiations under TPA can include immigration. Congress can speak to that, but they cannot negotiate that under TPA. That is very important to me. It is important to a lot of people across this country. I am standing here saying thank you to now-Speaker Ryan, who negotiated this with me and others.…”