Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. It was, indeed, a very dark day 3 years ago in March when this bill was brought to the House floor, 11 o'clock at night, 11:30 at night, and passed this House of Representatives after members of the Democratic conference, the majority Democratic conference, were lied to by the administration about an executive order to prevent the funding for abortion. That is what tipped the balance. That is what brought those last few wavering votes. How did we get to that point? Well, throughout 2009, throughout the year, the House had, indeed, considered the health care question. My Committee on Energy and Commerce did have a markup on H.R. 3200. They took a lot of amendments. Some amendments I offered; some amendments were bipartisan. All of those amendments that were accepted by the committee at some point evaporated at the opening of day, whatever happened over in the Speaker's Office, and they were gone. The health care bill which the Energy and Commerce Committee passed out at 1,000 pages grew to 2,000 pages in the Speaker's Office, and all the Republican amendments were stripped out. And then what happened? Well, H.R. 3200 died. It is gone. Nobody has ever seen or heard of it since. That was the House health care product. What, in fact, happened was, down at the White House in July of 2009, there were secret meetings that took place.…”