Charles Rangel: “I have been in this august body with great pride for over 3 decades. I have seen some pretty political things happen on…”

“I have been in this august body with great pride for over 3 decades. I have seen some pretty political things happen on this floor on both sides of the aisle, but this has to be one of the most mean things that I have seen since I have been here. The reason for that is that we are holding hostage millions of Americans that we promised early on that we were going to help. How many of my colleagues remember when we voted to give $15 billion to bail out the airline industry? How dramatically the minority leader and the Speaker got on the floor and promised that we would provide health benefits and unemployment compensation to those people who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs and lost their health benefits. All of a sudden, this was folded into a stimulus package. We did not say that we had to pass obscene tax cuts to help these people. We said that standing alone, these were hard-working Americans that deserved help from their country during time of war and time of recession.”