Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa). Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I am amazed at the smoke and mirrors and fog of obfuscation surrounding the debate on this bill. What Republicans are doing here today is defending the Constitution and what was put in place by the Founders, that Washington, D.C., the District, would not be part of a State, where it could be coerced or leveraged by a State to get things from it. I have just heard the last few minutes solutions offered to my colleagues that could probably be passed in 6 weeks or less, to allow what it is they claim they are saying for the citizens of Washington, D.C. Folding those 700,000 residents through a Maryland retrocession, as has happened with Virginia in 1846, would accomplish the goal of the same type of representation they are talking about. No, the politics is over on that side of the aisle because they have turned down a constitutional solution that this would be, instead, for an unconstitutional one that flies in the face and produces a 66- square-mile State that is \1/18\th the size of Rhode Island, with a population just a little bit larger than the city of Fresno, California, because they want to accomplish a political goal while we defend the Constitution.”