Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I am about to close. Again, I want to thank Chairman Issa for his hard work on this. This is so very, very important. I often tell my constituents, Mr. Speaker, that this is our watch. We are the guardians of the democracy today, and it is important to us to pass on a stronger and a better democracy than the one we found when we came upon this Earth. {time} 1515 A significant part of any democracy is openness, where people can know what the government is doing. When you have a representative government, people come to the town hall meetings trying to find out what is going on, and now they can go to computers and find out what is going on. We must have as much openness as possible and as is reasonable, and I think that this is a big step in the right direction of preserving that part of the democracy that calls for transparency. So I agree with the chairman. This is so much bigger than us. This is not just about this moment. This is about generations yet unborn. This is about people trying simply to be a part of their democracy, who are trying to understand it, who are trying to use information so that they can be participants in it. If they do not know what is going on, it is kind of hard to participate. If they do not know what is going on, it is kind of hard to go to their representatives to urge them to make appropriate changes.…”