Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Neal for yielding. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, as he well knows, is one of my favorite Members. He is a good friend. He is a man of great integrity. But, Mr. Speaker, both the House and Senate bills are bad bills, and this is a sad day in the House. Hypocrisy is on stark display. Responsibility is absent, and politics--and donors--have subverted policy. This conference is a sham: an attempt to make it appear that the House and Senate are going through regular order. Sadly, we have not gone through regular order. The thought is we will reconcile the two versions of the dangerous Republican tax increase and deficit bill. I call this a death tax because it will explode the deficit, as happened in 1981, when, under Ronald Reagan for 8 years, we increased the debt of this country 189 percent. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee mentions Mr. Obama, who increased it 88 percent, or less than half of the Reagan increase in the debt. And we were promised then, as we are promised now, that cutting these taxes would grow the economy. It would if that were the case. But there won't be any real regular order in this conference, just as there hasn't been throughout this entire process. There will only be further closed-door, backroom antics by Republican leaders on their own, asking Republican Members to take it or leave it. And this motion to instruct, of course, will be defeated.…”