Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I do agree with some of the gentleman's comments about the need to increase pay and benefits for our junior servicemembers and service families, but I have to strongly disagree with his attempts to turn this into an attack on the President. We have seen multiple reports from experts talking about the challenges that our servicemembers face, and the challenges we see to recruitment are because our economy is so strong that people have other better-paid and better-resourced opportunities under the current economy than they have for years. That has been suppressing recruitment and retention, so I think his economic analysis is a little off. I did think when he was getting up here, he might be here to speak about some of his amendments that were not being made in order. Last night, the majority of the Rules Committee, the Republican majority, voted unanimously to disallow amendments that would protect our Federal firefighters from cancer-causing PFAS chemicals. These were bipartisan amendments, and the gentleman from Wisconsin was a cosponsor of them, so I assumed that when he was here today, he was here to speak against the rule. I think perhaps that is the best choice until we have a more bipartisan approach to the amendments that should be made in order. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.”