Political Quotes

“I rise with a measure of ebullience. By a solid majority of both sides of the aisle, we have just voted to do exactly what our revered chairman said ought to be done, and reported how in the past it has been done. The vote was 69 to 31. I think that augurs well. I would particularly like to note a fact about this legislation which has been little remarked, the fact that with great felicity and sense of historic importance, the chairman has given to the bill the title the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1997. The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, hearkening back almost two-thirds of a century to 1934 when Cordell Hull, a former member of the Finance Committee, as Secretary of State helped the Nation out of the ruin that had been brought about by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, a tariff meant to raise living standards and do all the things that seem so easy if you don't think them through. If you were to make a list of five events that led to the Second World War and the horror of that war, that tariff bill of 1930 would be one of them. If there was a harbinger of the reemergence of the civilized world and the reinstitution of intelligent analysis of public policy, it was the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.”