Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Oregon, and I do consider him a friend because, oftentimes, over the past few years since I have been here, we have had the opportunity to sit down and engage on constructive policy discussions. I know my friend does like to have those discussions, which is why I like him. Mr. Speaker, I don't like to devolve into partisan fighting, but to listen to the description of this bill and to actually participate in this process, there are a lot of things that need to be addressed, and the Record needs to be set straight. Mr. Speaker, this committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has a long history of being a bipartisan committee. As you heard, there were nearly 390 amendments filed on this bill. Twenty-two Republican amendments are going to be accepted or voted on, and most of them are going to fail. They are designed to fail. Meanwhile, 148 Democrat amendments are being accepted and are going to be allowed to move forward--148 to 22. Mr. Speaker, each one of us represents somewhere around 750,000 people. Why should only certain people be able to be represented? Then, because of this crazy process we have here, we are going to take all of those amendments and combine them into about seven votes where they can take great policy, throw in one poison pill, and the whole thing dies. Mr. Speaker, this is not how you build legislation.…”