Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you, my colleague from New England, presiding in the chair today at this historic moment. You are always going to have a permanent place in the history of our country. You are a great leader and an inspiration to all of us. And everything that we are doing today is inspired by your incredible personal courage. With the incredible example that your service to the House is providing, I am confident that you will not be the last who will sit up there and preside, but only the first in a long line. Now since I introduced the legislation before us today, we have engaged in a bipartisan, extensive, and constructive process with stakeholders to find common ground on the legislative language and to move forward with this bill. I want to thank the leadership of Chairman Henry Waxman, without whom we would not be here today, Rick Boucher, who worked over the last year to construct this legislation before us, to Cliff Stearns from Florida, who worked in a bipartisan fashion to craft this historic legislation which we are about to consider, to Joe Barton from Texas, who ensured that from the very beginning this would be a bipartisan effort that we would put together in order to pass the historic legislation that is today before us. I would like to think that Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan are looking down on us here this afternoon and that they are smiling.…”