Emanuel Cleaver: “It is good to be here. We were sworn in together to this Congress, and I have often been asked, what has surprised you…”

“It is good to be here. We were sworn in together to this Congress, and I have often been asked, what has surprised you the most? In fact, today, a group of students from the Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri in Kansas City was here, the Bloch School named after Henry Bloch, the founder H&R Block, who is a Kansas Citian; and the question they asked was, what has surprised you the most? Having served as mayor of Kansas City for two terms, I have seen a lot in the political environment. So they were obviously wanting me to describe what I saw here as opposed to and what was different from what I saw as mayor. The number one issue I always report is the incivility. I don't think any of us who were sworn into the 109th Congress expected the incivility to be at the level that we have witnessed. I have gone to some of the long-time Members of Congress from the Democrat side and asked, for example, when we were in the majority, did we do mean-spirited things? Did we leave the vote open for 3 hours? Did we lock the door to keep people out from the other side? {time} 2130 And they said, we did shamefully some things. We never left the vote open for 3 hours. We never locked out people from a markup.…”