Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation, and I want to compliment Mr. Mitchell from Arizona for getting this bill to the floor. We have worked on this for several years. I am pleased that this is going to be passed today. Much has been said about the unemployment rate in this country. And I saw one other take on unemployment today, where it said that for low- income people below $20,000, the unemployment rate is actually 31 percent, which shows how devastating this recession is, and for some it is an actual depression. I would like this bill to be passed, but not just as symbolism. It is good symbolism and important symbolism. As was mentioned by the gentleman from California, it is not a tremendous amount of money, but it is important for us to recognize that we have a serious problem in this country and that we shouldn't be careless about the way we think about this problem. It shouldn't make us feel necessarily good because we passed this. This is just necessary. It does remind me of a piece of legislation I introduced many years ago, in the 1970s, when we had rampant inflation, which I anticipate will probably come back to this country. Back then we had a 15 percent inflation rate. My suggestion then in the form of legislation, to get the Members' attention to understand what inflation was all about, I said we should take a pay cut at the rate of inflation. Even today we might suggest that.…”