Political Quotes

“I come to speak on the nomination of Congressman Price to lead the Health and Human Services Department. But I have to respond to my colleague from Texas on his remarks. He wanted to know why Members of our side of the aisle wanted to have information about nominees or why it might take so long. There are a record number of billionaires in this Cabinet. There is nothing wrong with people making money. But when you have conflicts of interest, clearly people on this side of the aisle feel like we should do our job and find out about those conflicts of interest. Even in record time, these nominees have moved through this body, coming to votes in committee without our even having all of this information that we wanted to have on their conflicts of interest. For one nominee, the Commerce Secretary, we were negotiating even the day of the vote to clarify whether he was going to recuse himself if any of his transport vessels ever entered U.S. waters and would have a conflict on the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. So there is the notion that somehow we have been dragging our feet on a Cabinet, when a billionaire Cabinet has been nominated by this President, who seems to want to tweet against commerce. The conflicts are here, and we want them cleared up. As to Mr. Price, there are issues here that even the committee was not given the chance for a second hearing to get information about his conflicts of interest.…”