Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) threw me for a loop a bit there when he said the language restricting lobbying had been taken out. But in looking through this, it is moot because this has nothing to do with lobbying. The Congress just passed legislation to address corporate accountability. The President is going to sign it. There are a total of 11 sections in title 18 of the Civil Service Code. These are criminal law provisions. They govern the behavior of Federal employees and they restrict and prohibit acting as a lobbyist, being lobbied, revolving-door activities, financial conflicts of interest, making political contributions, lobbying with appropriated monies. The information that we are talking about here has nothing to do with lobbying. It is critical infrastructure vulnerabilities to terrorism. Electric dam supervisors are not going to be having anything to do with lobbying. It has to be in good faith and no evasion of law is allowed. These are telecommunications managers, they are financial service people, they are people that have identified vulnerabilities, vulnerabilities that we need to be protected by. We have been told by the FBI, by the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection. They desperately need this kind of language. The Department of Homeland Security needs it. Otherwise we cannot act effectively.”