Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it is regrettable that we are in this situation. It is the result of the Trump administration, again, trying to make an end run around Congress on an issue as important as Russia sanctions. On December 19 of last year, the Treasury Department notified Congress of its intention to relax sanctions against three corporations tied to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and close associate of Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration may have a perfectly legitimate reason for easing those sanctions. But the reason we are on the floor today is that we just don't know. And, under the law, we have very little time left to get the answers we need. The sanctions we are dealing with today were imposed under CAATSA-- the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act--the bill we passed 1\1/2\ years ago to, among other things, slap sanctions on Vladimir Putin's cronies. The law is written so that Congress would be able to step in if we thought any administration could be making a mistake in waiving or easing sanctions. The Republican majority at the time wrote strict and complex provisions for exercising that oversight, allowing only 30 days to pass a measure that could reverse such a decision.…”