Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for that comment. I think the American people apparently don't think we're accomplishing that objective that you want to accomplish by virtue of their response to the polls about what they think of the job that we've done over the last year. Let me say in addition to that, the bills I was referring to, my friend--yes, while I was the majority leader, we had the House and the Senate. I said 30 years. Of the 12 years that your party had the chairmanship of the Transportation Committee, we passed bills on a bipartisan basis, and we respected transparency. As the gentleman knows on earmarks, you quadrupled the number of earmarks under your leadership--not your personal leadership, but under Republican control of the House of Representatives. When we came in, what we did was said they all had to be online. Members had to put them on their Web site, and committees had to identify where those came from. Now, personally, we made them very transparent. You've eliminated them temporarily. We'll see whether that holds. But we will move on to the question of whether or not, when you say we're going to have open amendments, whether or not the amendments that are germane will be made in order so that, in fact, we can impact on the bill. The gentleman says he is interested in seeing my amendments. I think most of the amendments will come from our committee members. They are the ones that are struggling to find out exactly what this bill does.…”