Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the gentleman a couple of questions, but I want to preface my questions by saying I think that this is a terrible lost opportunity for serious, bipartisan legislation to address the problem of eminent domain abuse that has been taking place across the country and has been for several decades. I recommend to everybody a report of the Cato Institute by David Boaz, which summarizes what is taking place around the country. One of the worst perpetrators of eminent domain abuse in the country is a business developer named Donald Trump. In the mid-1990s, he built the casino and the hotel in Atlantic City, but he wanted to evict a woman named Vera Coking, who was exactly in the same position as Mrs. Kelo would be in a decade later. She had lived in this Victorian house at the end of the boardwalk in Atlantic City for several decades, but Donald Trump wanted to build a VIP limo parking lot to go with the existing hotel. He offered her some money and she said: No, thank you. My family has lived in this house for a long time. We want to stay here. Our kids go to school here. He offered her a little bit more money and she said: No, it's not for sale. We are going to stay here. So they created something called the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, controlled by, essentially, the Trump Corporation, but they got the city to do it, and they tried to force her out. Luckily, the Cato Institute and some libertarian lawyers defended her rights.…”