Political Quotes

“The Congressional Budget Office even indicated that there is no such thing as a ``cliff.'' There will be expiring deadlines that will allow deliberative thought. That's what you're talking about. Let's have deliberative thought. When you act and your hair is on fire or you're running out of a burning building, you will take any water hose you can find; and that may not be the good water hose that will keep us going. I just wanted to mention my late colleague, Mickey Leland. This is his birthday this week. It was November 27. I just wanted to mention it on the floor of the House. Congressman Mickey Leland served in this Congress in the late 1970s until 1989, when he died in Ethiopia trying to feed the starving Ethiopians who had been impacted by the drought. At the same time, he helped cochair the Hunger Select Committee because at that timeframe there was an effort to try to extinguish hunger in America and hunger in the world. Lo and behold, here we are in 2012, and I bet we can have a vigorous debate on hunger that still exists in this country. When we put our hair on fire, then we start looking and digging deep and we start ignoring the peace dividend and resources that we could get from that, from an expedited withdrawal for our hardworking military that are in faraway places such as Afghanistan. The point is that then we begin to do things like look at the minimal subsistence that people get in order to survive.…”