Political Quotes

“It is always a privilege to share the Chamber with my fellow Northwesterner. We have gone through this in the Ways and Means Committee with one of the least productive hearings I can remember, and that says a lot in my 10 years on the committee. We do it good natured, but, frankly, it is beside the point. And my friends from the Ways and Means Committee have documented the fact that this is a solution in search of a problem. The real outrage ought to be what is happening now behind closed doors to take a flawed bill that came from the House, was actually made worse in order to get the votes for it, and passed through on a narrow party-line vote--actually, a number of Republicans voted against it-- lodged in the Senate, no public hearings. In fact, we are told that they are not enabling people to actually get ahold of the documents to know what is going on. You know, it is stunning to me to have heard some of my Republican friends complain about the process of the Affordable Care Act. I was in the middle of that. We took a year. Three committees in the House had multiple hearings, work sessions. There were actually some Republican amendments adopted out in the open. CBO scored the bill so people knew.…”