Steve Buyer: “I came to the institution of Congress as a very young man--not as young as you were, John, perhaps--I was 32 years old.…”

“I came to the institution of Congress as a very young man--not as young as you were, John, perhaps--I was 32 years old. I was a fresh, young captain right out of the first gulf war, and I came to the institution of Congress because I wanted to serve my country in another capacity; and I was very upset having seen what men and women do in the name of liberty on a distant battlefield and then to see what had happened to Congress. To my friend John Dingell, your party controlled for 40 years, and then the institution became dark and mismanaged, unorganized. There were some bad things that were going on. That propelled me to come to Congress. And when I came to Congress, I then looked upon my mentors. As a young man, I had great respect because I grew up in an American Legion family, and those guys that would be out in the alley at the fish fries and shooing me out of the way because they were drinking a beer while they were telling stories and war stories, they were the World War II generation. And I come here to Congress and I got to serve, then, with some of the remaining World War II generation.”