Anthony Weiner: “it is gratifying to hear so many of my colleagues express their understanding of what happened in the campaign of 2006…”

“it is gratifying to hear so many of my colleagues express their understanding of what happened in the campaign of 2006 and why a majority party on that side turned into a minority party. They are right. Some of it was because of the abject abuse of the earmark process. Some of it was about the abject abuse that resulted in people being indicted and people going to jail. But that was only part of it. We on this side of the aisle got that message. That is why we have a transparent process that is going to open up all the earmarks to scrutiny. But that was only part of it. The fact that some commentators have referred to the previous leadership of the party of this House as the most ethically bankrupt in our Nation's history, that was only part of the reason that the American people rejected the Republican mission. They also rejected it because they ran up the largest deficits in recent memory. They rejected the Republican rule because there was a war that was being prosecuted without any oversight on that side of the aisle. The fact that wages were stagnant and the minimum wage hadn't been raised; that it was more and more difficult for the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class to send their kids to college. Well, on the Democratic side, we said we are going to work late into the night past the dilatory efforts of our colleagues because we are here to fight for the American people.”