Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to take advantage of this opportunity to commend my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are supportive of this effort that we are initiating here with Mainland China, one-fifth of the world's population. And I want to congratulate them for the support they gave us just 2 weeks ago, when 309 Members on a bipartisan basis supported my Africa bill and the Caribbean Basin bill, and we made an outreach to underdeveloped portions of the world in sub-Saharan Africa. And it is because of our belief that, based upon experience with the 48 countries there and the 700 million population, that kind of an outreach has a positive effect and it does raise the standards, the human rights issues are addressed when we have this kind of contact. While we have more ways to go with some of the other sub-Saharan African countries, and we do with China, too, this is a positive initiative working in the right direction, and I think everyone who supports it should be commended.”