Ted Poe: “I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate those comments. It is true, Congressman Green, you and I, our…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I appreciate those comments. It is true, Congressman Green, you and I, our careers have mirrored. We spent time at the courthouse together, you as a defense lawyer, me as a prosecutor. We became judges at about the same time. We got elected to Congress at the same time. We have known each other now almost 40 years, and I want to thank you for all that time you have been serving the community of Texas. And our districts match each other in the Houston area. We share the same common boundary. I also think it is appropriate that we are wearing purple ties. If I remember correctly, if you take red and you take blue and you mix them together, you get purple. How appropriate because this is a bipartisan endeavor where we are trying to show the horrors of domestic violence nationwide. It is not a Democrat issue; it is not a Republican. It is an American issue. And I guess it is a purple issue, if we can use that phrase. As you have mentioned, spending time at the courthouse, I saw a lot of these types of cases, and we have come a long way. And, yes, it is true, I remember the days when domestic violence, when some spouse would beat up another spouse, no matter how bad the injuries, unless it was death, many times the police would say, This is a family problem. It is not a criminal problem; it is not a public problem. It is a family problem. They have to deal with it.…”