Charles Rangel: “Mr. Speaker, this is a very emotional time for me, because our Speaker said that this bill is just as important as…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a very emotional time for me, because our Speaker said that this bill is just as important as fighting the war against terrorism. I think that is a big stretch, to compare the loss of American lives at Ground Zero to the passage of this bill as being on the same level. We cannot bring back those lives at Ground Zero, but we can get another chance to give the President the authority that so many of us believe that he wants and he deserves in order to have an effective trade policy. We do not believe that under our government and the democratic way that we expect to legislate, that what we are doing is undercutting the President of the United States. We believe in our democratic world that the majority and the minority should have an opportunity to express themselves, and the fact that someone can pick up some Democratic friends in the middle of the night does not mean that the process of having bills and having hearings on bills and amendments on bills and having the people on the Committee on Ways and Means have an opportunity to discuss these things means to take away these rights, and for us to stand up for what we know is morally and legislatively right, that we are undercutting the President of the United States. If the Committee on Rules says that we cannot express ourselves, we will fight on this. But we will salute that flag just as high as anybody else.”