Henry Hyde Quotes

See Henry Clay for an earlier expression of this point.

The President had threatened to veto a budget bill if it contained a provision that would increase taxes for the wealthy. There were not enough votes to override the veto. The majority leader urged dropping the provision:

In the English system there is no “separation of powers”. Parliament makes the laws and its ministers execute them. The highest judges are members of Parliament (the House of Lords) as well. So Lord Bereford was in the legislature when the statute was debated and passed.

Hollings who was one of the senior experienced senators was offended by the degree to which the George W. Bush Administration and the Republican leadership had turned to lobbyists to draft legislation and amendments to pending legislation. Lobbyists often have specialized information that members of Congress do not have, so there has been in modern times communications between lobbyists and members of Congress and their staffs. However, during the Bush Presidency the practice reached an extreme where lobbyists would even write the legislative language and give it to the members in whom they had invested by giving them large campaign contributions and many perks. K Street is the fanciest street in Washington DC with some of the most expensive office space. A substantial proportion of the lobbyists have K Street offices, hence the metaphor.

When requested to have the assembly remove items in the proposed constitution at the last minute:

Miller was the Chairman of the House Committee that wrote the bill. The Act allowed women and other workers who were the victims of wage discrimination to sue the discriminating employers even after the statute of limitations and run out provided that they victim had no knowledge of the discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter was a Goodyear Supervisor who was for years paid far less than the male supervisors doing the same work. But the company kept it secret and Ms. Ledbetter didn’t find out until the statute of limitations had said she could no longer sue. The Lilly Ledbetter Act corrected that injustice. President Obama observed that discrimination in pay affects not only the woman or other worker, but also the entire family which might therefor not be able to obtain health care, education or care for elderly parents. At the time that this quotation was made, white women in America who were working full time were earning only 77 percent of what men earned. For minority women, the proportion is even less. As bad as that was, it was an improvement over the situation when the equal pay act was passed 50 years before. Then women earned only 53 percent of what a man did.