Quotes

From the July 2009 issue

“It’s ironical to me that we’re living in a time…where we actually now can’t do anything until we talk to our loan officer in Beijing. We have a Communist banker. That’s where deregulation got us. It’s like Ayn Rand got loaded and woke up next to Keynes.”

—West Wing actor Bradley Whitford at a press conference on Capitol Hill, April 6

“If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.”

—Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 29

“My grandfather was not a monkey!”

—shouted by an unidentified woman at a Texas State Board of Education meeting focused on guidelines for teaching science, quoted by the Associated Press, March 26

“What’s Medicaid? I know I hear it—I really don’t know what it is.”

—Texas state Rep. Gary Elkins (R-Houston), three hours into a committee meeting on two dozen Medicaid-related bills, quoted in the Austin American-Statesman, March 19