Political Quotes

“I think it is an important one point. I hear articulated by our colleagues on the other side the whole process by which the House is acting on this legislation. I served for three terms in the House of Representatives. I still have colleagues and friends over there, and I know they have a way, through the rules process, of doing a lot of things that aren't allowed in the Senate. The Senate was designed by our Founders to be more free flowing, to slow things down, and to be more deliberative. The Rules Committee allows them to put together what is called a self-enacting, self- executing rule and, as you said, to ``deem as passed'' the Senate bill without a rollcall vote or without a recorded vote on it, which tells us right there that there are a lot of House Members who don't want to vote on the Senate-passed bill. They don't want to go on the record. The only way that bill can pass in the House of Representatives is with an accompanying reconciliation vehicle that makes the fixes that most of those House Members want to make. My point simply is this: Health care reform cannot pass absent this reconciliation process that is being promised on the House side, and also being promised to House Members is that if they vote for it over there, the Senate will follow suit.…”