Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me do a quick history lesson with this body. In 1773, the Colonies we were getting more and more frustrated with King George. There were a lot of issues we raised with him--a lot of taxes, a lot of changes, things that were happening in the judiciary, things that were arbitrary that were coming down. Then it boiled to a head. In December of 1773, a group of American colonists went out to Boston infuriated with the tariff policy over tea. The British East India Company had special access that no one else had. They had no taxes and everyone else had a tax--a tariff. It pushed out all of the other companies except for the British East India Company. A group of American colonists went out to one of the ships, grabbed all the tea in the harbor, and threw it overboard, creating the legendary Boston Tea Party. That was an argument about tariffs. It was an argument about international trade. It was an argument about American companies and fair trade, and we still talk about it today. It is interesting to note that in our letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1776, which we now call the Declaration of Independence, in the long list of grievances that we wrote out to King George, we included this line: We are cutting off our trade with all parts of the world as one of our big grievances. That grievance fell between the grievance of the British Government allowing British soldiers to murder inhabitants in America and our taxes without consent.…”