Political Quotes

“I was here in 1994 when the Republicans gained the majority in the Congress for the first time in 40 years, and remember the reforms that we put into place, term limits on committee chairmen where before chairmen who could barely walk into this Chamber were serving as Chairs of committees simply because of seniority. Well, we've thrown that out today. I guess that's change, but it's really change back. I was here in 1994, January of 1995, when we changed the rules on motions to recommit to make it easier for the minority to offer motions to recommit. Well, I guess we've changed that because now you've made it more difficult to offer real improvements to legislation by rolling back the motion to recommit. Yes, we have change in the air, but that change is simply going back. This is not progress for this Congress, and I very much regret that the Democratic leadership has chosen to curtail the rights of the minority and to not bring forward the kind of progress that comes from having term limits on committee chairmen. The new criteria for determining emergency situations that allow them to waive their own PAYGO rules are laughable. The rule appears to be that spending can be designated as emergency spending if it is necessary, unforeseen, or temporary in nature. I would suspect that the majority believes that all of their spending priorities are necessary.”