Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. In the summer of 2013, we passed a very tough sanctions bill against Iran. The chairman and I worked on it together very closely, and we passed it unanimously out of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Think about that--unanimously. We have so many different ranges of ideologies on the committee; yet, when it came to slapping sanctions on a murderous regime, we found bipartisan consensus unanimously. That bill went to the House floor and passed by a margin of 400-20. We sent it over to the Senate, and, unfortunately, the Senate sat on it. It didn't pass it. I raise this because it shows what can happen when we work in a bipartisan fashion on important foreign policy issues. This is important. My friends and colleagues on the other side of the aisle who came up and who spoke disparagingly about Iran and the Iranian Government will get no quarrel from me. I am no fan of the regime's and I am no fan of a lot of things, but I do think that if we are going to pass legislation that is going to have meaning, then we ought to do it together in a bipartisan form. {time} 1700 For the past 3\1/2\ years, Chairman Royce and myself have worked really, really hard to put our heads together and come up with bipartisan legislation, and this could have been the same. This could have been the same. This could have come to the Foreign Affairs Committee. We would have debated it, and we would have passed it probably.…”