Pete Hoekstra: “Only having been here 16 months, all the critical votes, we always lose by about 10 to 13 votes, the votes that would…”

“Only having been here 16 months, all the critical votes, we always lose by about 10 to 13 votes, the votes that would change the way that we do business. The only thing that I think really changed was the work that my colleague from Oklahoma did, was getting the discharge petition. That is opening up the process and without that, I am sure you would have been saying, I have 231 cosponsors. We are moving toward the discharge petition, but that discharge petition would have never passed, would have never gotten the 218 signatures because we would have never been able to tell the American people who signed and who did not sign. We will now be able to keep a record of who thought this legislation was good enough to cosponsor so that they could go back to their districts and say, see, we are for deficit reduction. I am sponsoring the A to Z plan. It is going to be real interesting to see those 12 or 13 who cosponsored the legislation or if there even will be 12 or 13. I hope there are 231 people lined up there tomorrow.”