Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, before we conclude this exchange on this important piece of legislation, I want to take this opportunity briefly to pay tribute to the former chairman of our Committee on Ways and Means and the man under whom I served when he was chairman of the Subcommittee on Trade. I refer, of course, to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Gibbons]. Mr. Speaker, I have often mentioned to folks that it was the Democratic party traditionally that embraced free trade, and it was the Republicans that tried to put the Great Wall of China around this country. In the post World War II era, our positions tended to shift somewhat, but not totally. It was, in fact, McKinley, a Republican, who imposed what at that point was the highest tariff in our history in 1890. That brought on the panic of 1893. Grover Cleveland was reelected in 1892, and he got the tariffs lowered and he restored a stable economy again. He said in a State of the Union message at that time, when you put those walls around your country, you inflict the greatest injury on that man who earns his daily bread with the sweat of his brow. That was a profound truth that he uttered. But I have mentioned to many people that the gentleman from Florida, Sam Gibbons, is our Grover Cleveland, and he has faithfully stood on behalf of those free market principles, and has tried to advance them, and we have worked amicably on a bipartisan basis on all of these issues.”