Political Quotes

“I have heard a couple arguments already--I guess we heard them before, Madam Chair--about how the place to do this was in committee. Fine. That could be. It doesn't make the amendments bad. It doesn't mean the principles contained in here are wrong. We didn't get a chance to do that in committee. You can blame whoever you want to for that. But the point of the matter is, this is where we are going to take up the amendments, and the fact we didn't do it 6 months ago does not make a good amendment a bad amendment. The amendments will stand on their own merit, as this one will, Madam Chair. What this one does is fairly simple. One of the things we have heard for the last several years about the Bank is that we need the Bank in order to meet foreign competition, that 1,700 other countries have export credit facilities, and if we don't have one of our own, we will unilaterally disarm and not be able to compete in the global marketplace. I happen to disagree with that. I happen to have some faith that American goods are good enough to compete overseas without the government subsidy. But that is fine. Let's take that for sake of discussion and say, all right, we don't want to unilaterally disarm. What this amendment does is makes sure that we don't.…”