Political Quotes

“I am honored to follow the gentleman from New York, because he laid out what we are talking about: A political trick being played with the Constitution as a prop, and that ought to be beyond the pale. Mr. Speaker, what we have here is the most outrageous abuse of the procedures I have seen in 16 years. Here is what happened. This constitutional amendment was presented in a hearing to the Judiciary subcommittee on which I sit. At the hearing, the chairman of the full Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde], was unable to conceal his lack of belief in this amendment. He was quite critical of it. As the hearing proceeded, this was the original amendment which is still the one they plan to vote on in the Senate, it became clear under the amendment they originally presented, to go to a flat tax in the income tax, or to go to a sales tax, or to give the President the power to impose a countervailing tariff on a Nation discriminating against our project, all of those would have required two-thirds. There was some disagreement among the sponsors, but they agreed to that. So what happened then? Well, it was clear from listening to several of the Republicans on the subcommittee that they did not have the votes to get it out of subcommittee. So there was no markup on this in subcommittee, there was no markup in committee.”