Political Quotes

“later today the debate will center on the fundamental question of whether Members of Congress should be responsible for upholding the same laws as the American people. The unified answer from this Congress must be an unequivocal yes. It is no secret that Congress has a track record of exempting itself from the very laws it writes. Former Senator John Glenn said such exemptions are ``the rankest form of hypocrisy. Laws that are good enough for everyone else ought to be good enough for us.'' Former Congressman Henry Hyde once quipped that ``Congress would exempt itself from the laws of gravity if it could.'' I have long supported efforts to ensure that Congress refuses to give into any temptation to exempt itself. When I was serving in the House of Representatives, I was proud to be a leader in the effort to require Members of Congress and their staffs be subject to the same requirements that the Obama health care bill put on all citizens. While the bad old days of Congress exempting itself from major occupational safety and health and fair labor standard laws were done away with to some extent after passage of the Congressional Accountability Act, and other reforms of the mid-1990s, Congress should not miss this opportunity to show the American people that it is willing to live by the very rules that are imposed on the American people. The people of this Nation are tired of business as usual in Washington.…”