Political Quotes

“I want to share another saying with my colleague that came from Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin said, ``If you act like sheep, the wolves will eat you.'' Now, I say to my Republican colleagues, if your leadership could do this to Chris Smith, they can do it to you. Now, you were elected, we were all elected by over 635,000 or so constituents. Our obligation is to come up here and be the representative of the people who elected us. We are not up here to please the Democratic leadership or the Republican leadership or even to please the President; we are up here to represent our people. But I want to say this: if you become so cowed, if you become so afraid, if you become so sheep-like that you are afraid to speak out, for example, as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) spoke out in defense of veterans health care, if you are so afraid that they are going to take away your chairmanship or they are somehow going to punish you politically, then you cannot really be an independent spokesperson for your people. I want to tell my colleague, I would urge my colleagues, I would urge the friends of the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) here in this Chamber and around this country to have the courage to speak up and speak out and say, what was done to Chris Smith is wrong. He is a good man, a good person. The only thing he did, the only thing he did was to stand up for veterans.”