Political Quotes

“I want to encourage my colleagues, if they vote for one and only one of these Export-Import Bank amendments, they should vote for this one. In fact, I would bring to their attention that they probably have already voted for it before because, in the last two Congresses, we have voted to put the Federal agencies on fair value accounting and passed that out of the House. We have already done it. I don't know where the objections were at that time, but we have already done this as a House, and we should do it again. To the gentleman from California's point regarding GAAP, let's be honest with people. Let's be honest. The government doesn't use GAAP. The government does not use GAAP the way that most ordinary people understand it. We use GAAP for government, which is entirely different. Let's just settle on this amendment so that we can count in a way that people understand, that if you lent money to the Batista regime before Castro and it hasn't been paid yet, maybe it is a bad loan; if you lent money to Chiang Kai-shek, maybe that is a bad loan. Let's start counting in ways that ordinary people can understand. This is not a poison pill. It is just good governance. And, most importantly, Mr. Chairman, it would not change the way the Bank functions in any way whatsoever. All it would do is change the way the Bank counts and tells Congress and the American people how it is performing.…”