Charles Rangel: “I had hoped that with the overwhelming Republican victory in the House and Senate and a Republican President, that this…”

“I had hoped that with the overwhelming Republican victory in the House and Senate and a Republican President, that this would be an ideal time to see whether or not we can at least ease the need for the partisanship we had had in the past and to see whether or not we could get some basic things done for the country and plan better for the future of how we are going to work in the Congress. I guess the major thing that we have to do is just talk with each other and maybe not go through the process of having hearings and going to the committees and all of that formality, but at least to be able to alert people as to how you would like to close out this Congress. So we are adding to the Military Tax Fairness Act, that no one could be against except communists, some pretty good measures. One is to give some relief to our stopgap extension for the funding of welfare. It is small. We do not know where we are going or what we are going to do, but there is no sense letting the poor folks suffer for our confusion, so moving on that at a later date makes a lot of sense since you could not complete it this year. The unemployment benefit extension to me only gives relief to three States, Oregon, Washington and Arkansas, and does not come anywhere near acting as though we are addressing the ever-increasing unemployment, especially in my State; and I wish we would have done something with that.”