Political Quotes

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. I agree with the goal of my good friend from Wisconsin about making sure that we deal with our long-term problems of budget deficits and national debt, and certainly look forward to working together moving down a path to prosperity. But we have slightly different ways of going about this, and it is unfortunate because I think if we really had full and open debate on the floor of the House, if we hadn't accepted draconian rules that make it very hard to be able to discuss on the floor the opportunity to have a balanced approach that would include, for example, eliminating unnecessary tax breaks for industries that no longer need them, or adjusting the Tax Code so we wouldn't have the anomaly of where people worth hundreds of millions of dollars--the most recent example of Mr. Romney releasing his tax returns, where he is paying less than 15 percent due to the use of carried interest long after he left his former employer. These are things that we could do that the American public agrees with and that would help have a balanced approach that ultimately would make a difference. I am, as I mentioned, a little bit perplexed that we are going to continue to beat up on the Senate, although that's always fun, to whack around the other body, but the point is that the dysfunction of the Senate is a Republican choice to shut it down, require extraordinary majorities for the most routine of items.…”