Political Quotes

“I would have preferred to focus my time in the general debate, and that's still my intention. The rule debate historically, as we all know in this body, is more of a partisan discussion, generally less focused on the details of the bill than the intensity of the process or the perspective by which the next action takes place. I understand that. But I would say to my friends, and I will go into greater detail on this in just a little bit, remember what you are about to vote on, a rule to enable us to proceed to a vote entails, is consideration of a bill that took two markups over 2 years in committee, where 100 amendments were considered in both markups, a process by which a bill to the floor a couple of weeks ago subject to another 100 amendments, tremendous debate, tremendous discussion, yet a bill that could not quite get the muster of both the left and the right. {time} 1230 So we wound up a little short in the middle. What you're voting on today is the farm bill farm bill. It's what a lot of the folks back home have said for years they want: consider every issue on its own merit. Well, now, we're about to vote for a rule that will make that possible. But in the farm bill farm bill, we achieve savings in the commodity title, do away with the direct payments, that thing that's caused such great angst--people getting money for not doing anything. That's gone, a substantial number of billions of dollars in savings.…”