Members Of The United States House Of Representatives

"My bill does four things:"

"In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it's passed into law... One of the biggest challenges in discussing the issue of reparations in a political context is deciding how to have a national discussion without allowing the issue to polarize our party or our nation. The approach that I have advocated for over a decade has been for the federal government to undertake an official study of the impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation."

"We welcome everyone here to the hearing. In the Texas v. Johnson case in 1989, the Supreme Court set forth one of the fundamental principles of our democracy. That is, that if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. That was Justice William Brennan."

"The idea to memorialize [Martin Luther] King's birth was raised the same year he died (1968), by Congressman John Conyers, Jr., a Michigan Democrat. It faced immediate resistance. The economic cost of a day off work was cited by some; a Republican committee said that "the establishment of a public holiday to honor a private citizen would be contrary to our country's long-standing tradition.""

"The push to celebrate Martin Luther King with a national holiday became a political movement in itself... In 1982, [Stevie] Wonder, together with King's widow Coretta Scott King, presented Congress with the largest petition in favor of an issue in U.S. history, with six million signatures supporting the national holiday. Conyers had continued to raise the bill at every Congress since 1968, and it eventually passed in a 338 to 90 vote in 1983. President Ronald Reagan finally signed off on the bill in November that year, despite having previously spoken out against the holiday."

"Today the Committee will consider the WikiLeaks matter. The case is complicated, obviously. It involves possible questions of national security, and no doubt important subjects of international relations, and war and peace. But fundamentally, the Brennan observation should be instructive."

"First elected to represent Detroit in 1965, Conyers is now the longest-serving African-American. For 50 years he has recognized the big picture and worked with activists inside and outside the halls of Congress to push for big systemic change, like ending illegal wars and achieving full employment and universal healthcare... At a January 7 tribute party co-hosted by 20 Washington, DC-based progressive groups, Conyers said, “Martin Luther King has shaped me in so many ways. Jobs, justice, and peace—it’s not hard to put a philosophy of that kind into political action. And the struggle is only beginning.” In one of his numerous successful political actions, Conyers introduced the first bill to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday... Conyers has been equally bold on foreign policy issues. A Korean War veteran, Conyers became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and later founded the Out of Afghanistan and Out of Iraq caucuses in Congress, working hand in hand with the peace movement. For social change activists, Conyers has been our progressive pole in Congress. On health care, he laid out the strong position on a single payer system that would deliver quality health care for everyone, and he... helped move the overall national conversation in a much more progressive direction."

"As an initial matter, there is no doubt that WikiLeaks is in an unpopular position right now. Many feel their publication was offensive. But unpopularity is not a crime, and publishing offensive information isn't either. And the repeated calls from Members of Congress, the government, journalists, and other experts crying out for criminal prosecutions or other extreme measures cause me some consternation."

"Soon, U.S. service members will begin deploying to Afghanistan to fight in a war that began before they were born. As we face this watershed moment, it’s past time to change our approach to the longest war in our country’s history"

"[Trump did a good job at the meeting] laying out a conservative agenda"

"[but] I got an interview I got to run to"

"Question: The question I have, if you’re sent to Congress, will you pursue some kind of investigation to find out whether or not this, uh, guy is really a citizen and entitled to those authorities? Meadows: Yes. If we do our job from a grassroots perspective, we won’t have to worry about it. We’ll send him back home to Kenya or wherever it is. We’ll send him back home."

"When the history books are written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny."

"Elijah is a friend of mine, and an outstanding member of Congress."

"We’re gonna take back our country. 2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home, to Kenya or wherever it is. We’re gonna do it."

"I’ve often said our children are the living messages we send to a future that we will never see. But now our children are sending us to a future that they will never see. There’s something wrong with this picture."

"I want to first of all, thank you. I know that this has been hard. I know that you face a lot. I know that you are worried about your family — but this is part of your destiny. And, hopefully, this portion of your destiny will lead to a better — a better, a better Michael Cohen, a better Donald Trump, a better United States of America and a better world. And I mean that from the depths of my heart. When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: "In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?" Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? … Come on, now — we can do more than one thing. And we have got to get back to normal."

"Here's my first look at the final conference report and supporting language. A total of 7 funding bills. With 30 minutes notice, I was allowed 1 hour to review and had to make a choice. I could not sign off."

"This “deal” provides de facto amnesty for anyone claiming to be even in the household of a potential sponsor of an unaccompanied alien minor AND is thus the “Child Trafficking Promotion Act” cc: @realDonaldTrump"

"Patrick Moore, as reported in ‘Pompous twit will get us all killed’: AOC tweet-tacked over Green New Deal by ex-Greenpeace founder, 3 Mar, 2019 21:19, Russia Today"

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) went viral again yesterday... thanks to her sharp questioning of Michael Cohen at the House oversight committee hearing... The freshman New York congresswoman “expertly laid a trap” to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns, and “won” the Cohen hearing, according to two raving press accounts. Ocasio-Cortez’s testimony focused primarily on Trump’s alleged deflation of his financial assets in order to lower his tax burden. First, she zeroed in on Trump Links, a golf course in Ocasio-Cortez’s district that was constructed with $127 million in city taxpayer funds. “This doesn’t seem to be the only time the president has benefited at the expense of the public,” Ocasio-Cortez said, pivoting to the heart of the matter: Whether Trump deliberately deflated the value of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, to lower his local property tax bill. Her knack for clever questioning, which is a marked contrast with other members’ preference for grandstanding, is ultimately rooted in a commitment to moving the needle for her constituents."

"One advantage Ocasio-Cortez has over some colleagues is that she consistently attends even the most mundane committee hearings, since she does not spend any of her day calling donors for money. Her online presence is strong enough that she has chosen to rely on it exclusively to raise contributions in smaller increments."

"Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death."

"Denouncing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's new policy of cutting off firms that work with primary challengers as "divisive" and "harmful," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday advised small-dollar donors to stop giving money to the DCCC and instead donate to progressive candidates directly."

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows the power she wields as a woman makes some people very uncomfortable ― and she’s learning to use that to her advantage. “The idea that a woman can be as powerful as a man is something that our society can’t deal with,“ the freshman Democrat from New York told The New Yorker in an interview published Monday. “But I am as powerful as a man and it drives them crazy.” Being the object of a sexist label, Ocasio-Cortez said, is helpful in one area: It really throws off her adversaries, including President Donald Trump."

"“I can see Trump being enormously upset that a twenty-nine-year-old Latina, who is the daughter of a domestic worker, is helping to build the case to get his financial records,” she said. “I think that adds insult to injury to him.”"

"A viral video of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez using a "Corruption Game" to highlight the need for campaign finance reform during a House Oversight Committee hearing last Wednesday has become the most viewed video of any politician in Twitter history... the 29-year-old lawmaker... [highlighted how easy & legal it is for politicians to] enrich themselves... Her examples ranged from taking "special interest dark money" from corporate PACs to fund a campaign to using hush money payments to make potential scandals disappear and writing laws that benefit donors and then buying stocks in their companies for personal financial gain."

"Stop the handwringing about @aoc and concentration camps. First of all, she's right. Second of all, she has single-handedly forced a debate about the barbaric and inhumane treatment of migrants at our Southern Border. She is smart, moral and correct."

"We see...Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC ... they’re all out there saying, look, we need to do something about corporate greed... the way that they were involved with loans... Over the most of the 20th century... you had caps... And then all of a sudden there was deregulation. And when deregulation took place, all of this bad stuff started occurring. You know, Wall Street stole from mom and pop. The economy crashed."

"Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders just put postal banking back where it belongs: high on the agenda of those who seek to create a just and equitable United States. On Thursday, the pair drew national attention with the announcement of their Loan Shark Prevention Act, a sweeping plan to “combat the predatory lending practices of America’s big banks and protect consumers who are burdened with exorbitant credit-card interest rates. The legislation imposes a 15 percent federal cap on interest rates and empowers individual states to establish lower limits.” ...modern-day loan sharks... work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions...and head financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America... Despite what the knee-jerk anti-government echo chamber may tell you, what Americans need now is banking that serves people, not the Wall Street speculators. American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein...says that the USPS can and should answer the call with “a nonprofit alternative to the big banks”..."

"The right doesn’t dislike @AOC because she's ineffective. They despise her precisely because she communicates boldly, passionately and in a Twitter-native manner. When AOC talks, Republicans know they are losing."

"I don't think that she knows who Adam Smith was."

"AOC embodies the kind of leadership we dream of: brilliant, courageous, and gifted, with a quick mind and an understanding of our history and the political moment from which she emerged. And most importantly to me, she believes in environmental justice."

"During a hearing, the freshman lawmaker created a game in which she pretended to be “a really, really bad guy” who wants to abuse the system as much as possible. Then, in a series of questions, she exposed the world of payoffs, dark money, PACs and more. She even revealed how it was perfectly legal for a lawmaker to invest in an industry, then write laws to benefit that industry."

"Ocasio-Cortez... has repeatedly called out Trump in the past month over his immigration policies, and has compared migrant detention facilities near the southern border to concentration camps. The comparison prompted backlash from multiple GOP lawmakers, who called her remarks disrespectful to the Holocaust and the millions of Jews killed during it. Ocasio-Cortez has stood by her comments, saying she would "never apologize for calling these camps what they are." The New York congresswoman reiterated her stance to Yahoo News, arguing that Trump's tendencies compared to that time period. She also held the president directly responsible for the poor conditions at the migrant detention facilities, saying his policies have led to numerous Central Americans fleeing their native countries."

"This is the hood that spawned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the country’s most privileged revolutionaries. She called herself Sandy Cortez back then. She imagined that every place could be just like Yorktown Heights if only we got rid of the police. Apparently, she still believes that."

"This entire interview is real but this by AOC stands out: "So I need my colleagues to understand that ... their base is not the enemy.""

"The best part of the night, by any metric, was the eye-blink time slot afforded Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to second Bernie Sanders’s nomination. Her remarks were a song, a poem of hope and defiance, and they speak better for themselves than I ever could... One minute and 37 seconds out of a program two hours in length, and Representative Ocasio-Cortez made the most of all of it. Imagine if she had been given the same amount of time as Kasich, or Powell, or even the commercials CNN ran during the roll call? Well, maybe by 2024, the Democratic establishment will have realized which way the tide is running, Biden or no Biden, and give the ever-rising progressive wing of the party its due."

"Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion energy plan Tuesday with a heavy focus on the Green New Deal agenda being pushed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the far-left flank of his party. Speaking in Wilmington, Del., Biden promised a “clean energy revolution,”... Biden’s announcement comes as the presidential wannabe courts idols on the left of his party including Bronx-Queens Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the hope that they will support him and steer young voters his way in November. In May, AOC announced she had been selected to co-chair Biden’s climate change panel along with former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. In a statement to Reuters after news broke that AOC was joining Biden’s climate change panel, a spokesperson for the Democratic socialist said the congresswoman believed in applying pressure “both inside and outside the system.”"

"Ocasio-Cortez also took issue with Abbott's comments on rape, noting that the majority of people who are raped or sexually assaulted are assaulted by someone whom they know. The anti-sexual violence nonprofit RAINN says 8 out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. "These aren't just predators that are walking around the streets at night. They are people's uncles, they are teachers, they are family friends, and when something like that happens, it takes a very long time, first of all, for any victim to come forward," Ocasio-Cortez added. "And second of all, when a victim comes forward, they don't necessarily want to bring their case into the carceral system.""

"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed Abbott in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, saying he lacks basic knowledge of biology. "I'm sorry we have to break down Biology 101 on national television, but in case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late for your period," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And two weeks late on your period ... can happen if you're stressed, if your diet changes or for really no reason at all. So you don't have six weeks.""

"One big thing the NatCons are right about is that in the Information Age, the cultural and corporate elites have merged. Right-wing parties around the world are gradually becoming working-class parties that stand against the economic interests and cultural preferences of the highly educated. Left-wing parties are now rooted in the rich metro areas and are more and more becoming an unsteady alliance between young AOC left-populists and Google."

"Four of the most dynamic women of color in Congress – representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib"

"People compared my election (in 2018) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s. In both districts of roughly a little more than 700,000 people, it was a good day for democracy."

"at the end of the day, I haven’t changed a single policy position that I originally ran on. I have all of the same exact convictions, values, policy commitments. I’ve just gotten better at executing on them. And I understand that my role is in that inside-outside political strategy that the left has built an increasingly sophisticated outside, but we have an anemic inside. And I feel like right now my role is to build a juggernaut of momentum. And goddamn, honestly, if we can get to a place where a regular old Democrat believes in trust-busting and a regular old Democrat believes in a full path to citizenship, and Medicare for All, and combating climate change, and a Green New Deal, fuck yeah. That’s literally what my goal was from the beginning. My goal has always been to bring the mainstream to me, and in the process, have my beliefs be mainstream."

"I will not yield because it was a terribly disrespectful comment, and I will not yield to disrespectful men."

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who would become a hugely visible and audible figure and a significant voice for progressive issues. She sponsored the Green New Deal in the House of Representatives in February 2019, little more than a year after taking her oath of office. Notice the confluence of Standing Rock, the Justice Democrats, Sunrise, and this young woman's life. She said, "I was really wallowing in despair for a while: What do I do? Is this my life? Just showing up, working, knowing that things are so difficult, then going home and doing it again. And I think what was profoundly liberating was engaging in my first action-when I went to Standing Rock, in the Dakotas, to fight against a fracking pipeline. It seemed impossible at the time. It was just normal people, showing up, just standing on the land to prevent this pipeline from going through. And it made me feel extremely powerful, even though we had nothing, materially-just the act of standing up to some of the most powerful corporations in the world. From there I learned that hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create, with your actions. Hope is something you have to manifest into the world, and once one person has hope, it can be contagious. Other people start acting in a way that has more hope." She went from looking for hope to making it, through her work on many issues and her brilliant leadership on key issues for the country and the world, including climate."

"Pretty incredible that centrists are allowed to directly blame AOC for losing their own races but when AOC defends herself by pointing out that they rejected her help while the candidates who accepted her help in swing districts won she gets accused of dividing her party."

"They said: 'We can do it all. We can fight for our families held hostage by Hamas, stand against occupation, stand with impacted Israelis, stand up for innocent Palestinians"

"@AOC is on NPR talking about funding the Green New Deal by decoupling tax revenue from government spending. Heads are exploding across Washington."