Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding. Speaker Langevin, I congratulate you on taking the podium. I congratulate you on your extraordinary service to the people of Rhode Island and the people of our country. And I congratulate you for being an example of the can-do spirit that has made America such a great country. Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased to be here on this, the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I'm particularly pleased to be here on the floor with my former colleague and my lifetime friend Tony Coelho of the State of California. Tony Coelho was the Whip on our side of the aisle for a number of years, elected into that position very shortly after he took his seat in the Congress of the United States. He is a person of extraordinary ability, extraordinary energy, extraordinary focus, and extraordinary accomplishment. But early in his life, he fell off, in a farming accident, a tractor and injured his head. As a result of that traumatic injury, he became an epileptic. And because of that, his lifetime dream of becoming a priest was not available to him. That was something of a great trauma, again, to him. However, he overcame that, came to Congress, and has made his life's work opening up America to those who had been discriminated against, to those who had been shut out, to those for whom the pursuit of happiness was made either impossible or very difficult by the barriers and prejudice that existed.…”