Continuing Appropriations and Surface Transportation Extentions Act, 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLE. I thank the gentleman for allowing me to have time.

Madam Speaker, I must admit I was in my office, signing letters, with the television off--muted--when I noticed a succession of Democratic speakers, which, as a former NRCC chairman, was a horror to just watch one after the other. I thought we must be getting beaten to death down there. What's going on?

So I flipped on the sound, actually, just in time to see Mr. Rogers from Kentucky come on, and I thought this is actually some sort of bipartisan lovefest going on. We don't have a lot of that around here, and I wanted to get down and participate.

You know, this is not, frankly, a very good time to be a Member of Congress. None of us are held in high esteem by the American public. I think it is an even more difficult time, quite frankly, to be a member of the Appropriations Committee because there are times when I think we're not held in much esteem by our own colleagues. I have heard so many things from some of our good friends on the authorizing committees that I think they forget the very simple fact that they always authorize more money than we spend on the Appropriations Committee and that we are usually left with the tough job of reconciling differences that have been unresolved on the authorizing committees. It is something that needs to be experienced by every Member of Congress before they appreciate the magnitude and the quality of the work that goes on on this particular committee.

I had the opportunity to know my good friend Chairman Lewis many, many years ago. In 1991, I arrived in Washington, D.C., to be the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. I had been here a few weeks when, all of a sudden, I got a message that I needed to go over and see my friend, who was the conference chairman. I thought I've only been in town a month, and I've already managed to offend one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress. I actually brought a staff member with me so that, if I were in real trouble, the staff guy and the additional staff guy could handle the problems.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

Mr. LEWIS of California. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. COLE. We chatted for a minute, and the gentleman immediately said, Well, actually, I just wanted to get to know you because I'd heard a couple of nice things about you.

Since that time, he has been nothing but kind and generous to me. Frankly, I've watched him define what a Member and an appropriator ought to be year in and year out in the minority and in the majority. He has just absolutely served this body with incredible class and incredible character and incredible professionalism every single day he has been here.

I would be remiss not to talk about my friend Chairman Obey as well. Frankly, I'd heard about Chairman Obey--again, before I'd ever arrived--from my old boss, Mickey Edwards. Mickey Edwards told me he was often wrong but always honest, and you could deal with him. Indeed, I found that to be the case on the last two points, not necessarily on the first. He has been a wonderful chairman, a wonderful colleague, somebody who is a credit to this institution and a credit to his district. I think he defines, as my friend Mr. Lewis does, who and what a chairman ought to be and how a Member of this body ought to act.

If everybody in America knew these two gentlemen, the opinion of this institution would be enormously higher.

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