Political Quotes

“I now have an answer to a question. There was a bill in this package, H.R. 4088, that had never had a hearing, it had never been to our committee, everything else had been through the process, and I asked the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) about it. He represented the Rules Committee, and he told me it was a good bill, and therefore, there was no need for it to go to a hearing or through subcommittee or committee. That struck me as rather odd. I've never heard that before, particularly from a party that says they wanted to bring us regular order. {time} 1520 But now that the gentleman from Arizona has spoken, let me make a confession, Madam Chair. I was being a little disingenuous. Now, let me alert people to the rules who may be new to the place. You may not accuse anyone else of being disingenuous under the House rules, but you can cop to it. I knew what H.R. 4088 was, and we just heard it. We heard the gentleman from Arizona--surprisingly, to me--talk about his legislation. His legislation is the bill I was referring to. It was introduced on February 24, I believe, of this year. It had no hearing. It had no subcommittee markup. But it sounded very familiar as he described it, because that's not just a bill. It's a shape-shifter. It used to be the Himes-Schweikert bill. So let me be clear: yes, we did consider this in subcommittee and in committee. It was voted on and debated. But it wasn't the Quayle bill then.…”