Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, it's a privilege to be speaking on the floor here this evening. Here we've been talking for some time about the huge deficit spending that's going on. In fact, Republicans have promised to make massive cuts. And the old story that used to be told about the fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, about a young freshman Democrat coming up and talking about how difficult things were here in the House and that: Gee, as a Democrat, it's obvious the Republicans are our enemy. They're trying to stop us from doing what we need to, and, boy, the media's not helping. And Speaker Rayburn stopped him, reportedly, and said: Son, the Republicans are not your enemy. The media is not your enemy. At the other end of the hall, the Senate, now they're your enemy. Well, I thought that was a strange story when I heard that about Speaker Rayburn, but the longer I've been here, the more we see so many great bills that have come out of the House in the last year have gone down the hall and are languishing for lack of action. And so when I read that a friend down the hall, Leader Reid, was lambasting Republicans for a do-nothing status, it was remarkable to me that they could have so many House bills sitting down there waiting to do something and yet doing nothing with them. Now, we have been trying to get bills passed into law that would make substantial cuts.…”