Political Quotes

“I have not prepared any remarks for this occasion, and I would be the first to assert that I am not especially prepared. Accordingly, to be brief, perhaps the more intense for that reason, to say that in 18 years that we have shared this committee, as the Senator from Rhode Island just said, they have been years of perfect trust between us and, on my part, profound admiration. And just a moment's good cheer. The Senator from Rhode Island will remember in those intense days leading up to the 1986 legislation, we would meet each morning in Senator Packwood's office about 7:30 for coffee and plan the day's strategy. If you would like to know something about the Tax Code as it then was, it fell to me each morning to read the service, as it were. I would find the previous day an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that said: ``Buy oxen, antelope''--I do not know-- ``cattle, llamas * * * guaranteed losses.'' And they would guarantee you losses and you could not but make money on the Tax Code. It was a scandal and the country knew it. It is all gone now--thanks to you, and thanks for so much else. There is just one line, perhaps of help in the years ahead, of Dr. Johnson, who said, ``How small, of all the ills that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.''”