Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman and my good friend for yielding and for hosting this hour tonight. I look forward to the comments by all my colleagues from Michigan and Illinois. Let me just start out by saying a couple of things. I had a great ninth grade teacher, Mr. Denekas. We learned about how the government worked. You pass a bill in the House and you pass a bill in the Senate. I learned later on that the House bill is always better than the Senate. But in this case, John Shimkus and I--and he is going to be a speaker from Illinois a little bit later on this evening--were two conferees on this bill. I have got to say that, as we debated this bill, there were some elements that were not so good. But at the end of the day, as this bill meshed together, we took the best elements of both the House and the Senate bill and we got a bill that the President was able to sign. I can remember being trashed left and right back in November and December about what this bill was going to do or not going to do: it wasn't going to provide real tax relief to the working class; companies weren't really going to give bonuses; this was all just going to be bogus arguments. Now, at the end of the day, 2-plus months since the bill was signed and became enacted, my constituents are finding out good things about the bill. Yes, they are getting real take-home pay increases from the jobs that they do. Yes, they are getting bonuses.…”