Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for the recognition. I don't want to say that Ralph Hall has been here for a long time, but he was here when the Earth cooled the first time. Ralph, I just can't tell you what it's meant to serve with you. When I was a freshman Member of Congress, you actually were on the other side of the aisle. You were the ranking Democrat on the Science Committee, and I served with you there. Certainly, your ability to get your way in that committee was something that I've always marveled at, because we had the votes, but you had the way of getting things done. And then I lost the ability to have my bills bipartisan because I always got Ralph to cosponsor whatever crazy little bill I had up there and it became bipartisan, and then Ralph switched sides on me. I wasn't able to utilize that any longer. I've got to tell you, Ralph, one of the profiles in courage that I will always remember from my service here in the House, I hadn't been here 3 months and it was the first budget vote that I had lived through. It was a pretty wild night. It went on late. The budget was kind of seesawing back and forth with not quite enough votes to pass, and then it had enough and then people switched. Right at the end, Ralph Hall came down this very aisle to this table and cast the deciding vote in favor of the Republican budget. At the time, he was a Democrat, but it was important to him. Our country had just gone to war in Iraq.…”