Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I am so delighted to be joined this evening by women members of the Democratic Women's Caucus. The chairwoman, Lois Frankel, is here with us this evening. Vice Chairs Ayanna Pressley and Kathy Manning and other members of the Democratic Women's Caucus, Representatives Sydney Kamlager-Dove and Emilia Sykes, are with us here this evening, as well. We are celebrating Women's History Month. What we thought we would do today is talk about many of the women who have come to Congress and made history and a big difference in this very male-oriented institution. We call your attention to this chart. It starts here at about 1917, quite frankly, when Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, all the way back to 1789. We finally elected a woman in 1917. She served 1 year, not even one term, because she voted against the war. Here we are today. Within 1 hour, Mr. Speaker, we won't have a chance to talk about all of these women, but I think that the women we have chosen to speak about are women who found that they had the same profound challenges in this institution. They were highly educated and very intelligent, yet they faced tremendous hurdles. They overcame them and made a big difference in our institution. We are going to talk about Bella Abzug from New York tonight. We are going to talk about now-Senator Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin, who was a Member of this body.…”