Charles Rangel: “I have been in this place a long time, but I do not remember even this close to an election seeing the type of hypocrisy…”

“I have been in this place a long time, but I do not remember even this close to an election seeing the type of hypocrisy that we see today. There is only one ship that they would like to see get on the waters, and that is the estate tax relief, and it is only going to provide relief for a fraction of 1 percent, of some 7,500 individuals in the country. That is the wealthiest of the wealthy. Most Americans cannot even dream about getting to the status that they are going to be liable for taxes, and why would they want this? They want this because if you want campaign contributions, you go where the money is, and believe me, this is the cream of the crop of the money that we have in the United States of America. They know the bill stinks to high heaven. That is why it is not on its own two feet. If this were a great thing for America and democracy, one, we would not wait until midnight to talk about it; and two, we would be so proud of it. The Star Spangled Banner would be here, the lights would be shining and we would talk about estate tax relief. But it stinks so heavy, they try to sweeten it up by putting other tax bills on it. There must be around 40 extenders here that do good work, and so they say if you want the extenders, you got to buy this stinking rule, but that is not enough. Whatever you do for the corporations or the rich folks, but why hold millions of Americans that cannot get an increase in minimum wage, why would you put them on top of this?…”