Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to strongly support Mr. Lucas' motion to instruct conferees on the American COMPETES Act. The House-passed version of the bill should really have been called-- as a number of my colleagues have mentioned--the American concedes act. Democratic leadership cobbled this legislation together from mostly partisan bills without Republican support, in stark contrast to what our colleagues in the Senate did. As ranking member of the Asia-Pacific Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over China, I am deeply disappointed by the partisan nature and the substance, in many ways, of this House-passed bill. Competing with China should not be a partisan issue. On every front, the Chinese Communist Party is aggressively challenging the free world and our belief that open societies and free markets, and, yes, rule of law are the way to a prosperous and equitable civilization. After decades of inaction, it is time to reevaluate our basic approach toward engagement with China. The Democrats' bill doesn't do that. When Republicans attempted to amend the bill to make it better, the Democrats rejected virtually every one of those attempts. I would like to highlight two particularly concerning omissions from the House bill. First, we should have adopted provisions to modernize and strengthen our relationship with Taiwan which, by the way, got bipartisan support in the Senate.…”