Political Quotes

“I had the good fortune, earlier today, to have the first visit in a long time to the new Capitol Visitor Center. When I first came to Washington many years ago and served as a Capitol policeman, every evening in the summer part of my duty was to go out on the east front of the Capitol and watch things. I can remember having many fond memories, such as watching Carl Hayden in his wheelchair watching those concerts. Even back then, I thought, gee, this is such a beautiful place. The east front of the Capitol is so much easier for visitors coming to the Capitol to see than the west front because there are not those big steps. Before, it didn't look very nice. The blacktop covered that place. That just didn't look right--with cars parked there and oil spilled from the cars. I had the good fortune, in the third year that I was a Senator, to become chairman of the Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee. Back then, the reason I was able to do it was Senator Bumpers simply didn't want to do it. It was a great experience for me. I started working to do something to make the east front of the Capitol a little more visually nice. We did a number of things. First, we got the cars off.”