Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, I am only talking about the Brooke amendment now. I would make a couple of points. The gentleman from New York's argument that during 1981, when Gramm-Latta passed with Ronald Reagan's first year of the presidency, it was a Democrat, the Democrats controlling the agenda, illustrates how at variance he is with the facts. Second, we were talking about Republican control of the Senate for all of those periods when we could not get legislation through that was not agreed to by both. We also had a Republican President whose signoff we had to have on the legislation. This is an example of the kind of distortion we are talking about, and again the notion, and, by the way, during this whole period when I got here in 1981, the Republicans controlled the Senate, the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Presidency from 1981 through 1986, but according to the gentleman from New York they have no responsibility. But I also want to talk about the substantive pattern here, and the substantive pattern here is for all the talk about empowerment, let us give the housing authorities more control over the lives of the tenants. When the gentleman from Louisiana wanted to expand tenant rights, no, no, that is no good. The gentlewoman from New York and her colleague, the other gentlewoman from New York, want to protect tenants' rights regarding pet ownership; no, no, no, we cannot interfere with the authorities.”