Political Quotes

“My colleague from Florida, with whom I have had the privilege of spending many hours in the Rules Committee debating this and a range of other issues, raised a number of points I think that are important to clarify. First of all on the issue of minority recruitment, last night, in the Rules Committee, in open session, Chairman Nunes was asked about this, and he testified very clearly and directly that diversity is very important, that it is mission-critical for the reasons that my colleague from Florida stated. I can report that there are several provisions in the classified annex--I won't go into the details about them--with which my colleague may or may not be familiar that support the whole notion of Centers of Academic Excellence, which are particularly focused on recruiting young people, recruiting minorities and young people across the board for service in the intelligence community. We tend, in these rule discussions, Mr. Speaker, to have a lot of arguments and criticism of procedure. The Democrats this morning seem to be particularly concerned about our same-day authority. But I would just note, Mr. Speaker, I am certainly confident that my constituents who are watching this--and, I would say, probably most Americans watching--would understand the importance of the House of Representatives getting its work done in a timely manner.…”