Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for those remarks. I want to join him in thanking our colleague, Brian Cooper. I am not sure, Brian, that I adopt the sentiments of the majority leader with respect to what Mr. Thomas could and could not do. Apparently he chose not to, and that is good. But, Brian Cooper, we want to thank you for three and a half decades of service to this House; three and a half decades of service to this House in a role that most people, including Members of this House, would not recognize, but that is critically important to the good management and flow of the people's business through this House. As the majority leader referenced, he will continue to root for the Baltimore Orioles because he is from Baltimore. He is a Marylander, and we are very proud of him. I want to thank him for his service and wish him the very best in the days ahead. I now will go to the schedule. {time} 1200 By law, under the Budget Control Act, a budget is supposed to be brought to this floor on April 15. The majority leader would quickly observe that neither Democrats nor Republicans have always met that deadline. However, we are unusually late in the budget process, in my view, and despite months of promising to return to regular order, we have not yet done so as it relates to the budget, and the budget has not been marked up in committee, Mr. Speaker.…”