Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman, my colleague, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, as my colleague indicated, I am a small business owner. I am proud of the business that we started up in Corning, New York, and the many people that we have employed in that business, Mr. Speaker. I also know that during times when people are in trouble or businesses are in trouble, they have to make the hard decision of laying some people off, and I can empathize and understand when those individuals are in that situation. But what we're talking about here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is just some commonsense reforms to allow the States to have the flexibility to do what is best for them in their local jurisdictions to try to empower the men and women from their districts so that they have the opportunity to go back to work. I wholeheartedly disagree with the concept that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are arguing for tonight to strip that language that would give States the flexibility to do commonsense reforms in unemployment, not taking away the unemployment program--no one is talking about doing that. What we're talking about, ladies and gentlemen, is implementing the ability for States to have people get an education, or require people to get a GED, to give them tools so that when they go into the marketplace they have the ability to get a paycheck again rather than an unemployment check.…”