On the recordJune 15, 2010
This is the first time in my 20 years here that I have seen the Speaker lobbying from the podium. Let me welcome all of my colleagues here to the Capitol today. There are a good number of you. I would hope that some of you would work to get more of your colleagues to come back for what really is a very special day, and we, on a bipartisan basis, really do welcome you and glad to see many of you. Some of you, this is the only day of the year I get to see; others I get to see a little more often, like these two over here. To Bill Gray, congratulations. Bill Gray has spent a lifetime of service to his country, whether it was the years that he spent here, the years that he spent with a number of organizations where he has provided exemplary service, and I am very pleased that Bill is being honored today by all of you. He and I had a chance to serve together. I was a young pup, he was one of the senior leaders in the other party, but we still always had an opportunity to talk to one another. As all of you know, we continue, as Steny said, to face big challenges, and what is really of interest to me and I'm sure to Steny is the political rebellion that is going on in America today. I have never seen anything like this. When you look at what is happening, we've got people who have been driven off the couch, off their easy chair, away from their TV, and into the streets protesting what their government is doing.
