Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge you to turn away from this destructive path of threatening the full faith and credit of the United States Government as a means to extort political concessions and to subvert the democratic principle of majority rule. I urge you, Mr. Speaker, to become the Speaker of the House and not spokesperson for a fringe cult within the GOP caucus. The Affordable Care Act is settled law. In fact, the negotiation for any change to the Affordable Care Act is possible and perhaps even desirable under so-called regular order, and that goes for the other ransom demands that the GOP has made. Now, of course, the reason for this crisis, this shutdown of the government and the debt crisis, has now shifted from repealing or delaying ObamaCare to vague demands for negotiations. We have seen a laundry list, Mr. Speaker, of other so-called demands: approval of the Keystone pipeline; concessions on payments to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; tort reform; repeal of job-killing regulations, that is, protections for clean air and clean water. The latest demand is Republicans passed a bill to create a superdupercommittee that includes instructions that the committee can only resolve our budget crisis by considering spending cuts and entitlement cuts, but no new revenue. In other words, Mr. Speaker, you don't really want to negotiate. It is just obvious from your words and deeds, Mr. Speaker, since you, Mr.…”