Charles Rangel: “This is no profile in courage for me to be voting for this bill. It reminds me of the joke we use to have on Lennox…”

“This is no profile in courage for me to be voting for this bill. It reminds me of the joke we use to have on Lennox Avenue, where someone stopped hitting you on the head with a hammer and you're supposed to say, ``Thank you so much for the relief.'' We created this monster. We're the ones that have said--at least the Congress has said in the majority in the House--do what you have to do but, for God's sake, don't ask the top 2 percent of the wealthiest people in this civilized country to pay their fair share. And while you're thinking about taxing people, why don't you start talking about cutting people off from unemployment compensation? Why don't you think about not providing so much for the sick and the aged? Why don't you start privatizing these things? This was not the America that I knew when I came to the Congress. This was something that a handful of people from nowhere came here and started preaching that we had to destroy Big Government and the vulnerable who had no lobbyists, who had no one to come to, were saved by us, by responsible people who came together and said, basically, Have you lost your mind? What are you doing? How can you go home and tell the people this is what you created? And so we paused and common sense has prevailed, and we can at least go back home and say, Not now, but they're coming again.…”