Vicente Gonzalez: “I want to express my thanks of course to my colleague Ciro Rodriguez, my neighbor and fellow San Antonian for his great…”

“I want to express my thanks of course to my colleague Ciro Rodriguez, my neighbor and fellow San Antonian for his great service in this Congress and, of course, as past chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. I first would like to digress from the remarks that I have had here prepared to highlight the life of a great man. The individual that I will be highlighting taught me as a very young man and as a young lawyer that if you have something to say, say it; if you believe in something stand up and state it. While we were awaiting our call to have our Special Order, some of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle were representing certain figures and facts, demonstrating that the practices of the Democratic party and Democratic leaders simply resulted in deficit spending, not having a balanced budget, runaway spending and so on. The only problem with those facts and those figures is that the Republicans have been in the majority since 1995. It was only last year in 2006 that we were able to take back the majority. So, if there was too much spending, if there was irresponsibility in the way of fiscal policy, they had the majority.”