Rep. Alcee Hastings invokes Thomas Edison: ‘No rules around here — we’re trying to accomplish something’

From George Bennett of The Palm Beach Post's Post on Politics on March 20:

South Florida’s own U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, is taking heat in the conservative blogosphere today for remarks at a Rules Committee hearing in which he defended a controversial “deem and pass” strategy for approving health care overhaul that Democratic leaders ended up abandoning.

(Click here to see Hastings' entire statement, which begins at 4:44 on the C-SPAN video.)

Hastings said Republicans often used the same tactic when they were in charge of the House from 1995 to 2007. Hastings said it was time to “stop all of the rhetoric and get to the business of what’s at hand. The fact of the matter is that a lot of our fellow Americans are hurting and they don’t have affordable health care and for the life of me I cannot understand why we all should not be willing to share in order to help the least of them.”

Hastings then added:

“I wish that I had been there when Thomas Edison made the remark that I think applies here: ‘There ain’t no rules around here — we’re trying to accomplish something.’ And therefore, when the deal goes down, all this talk about rules, we make ‘em up as we go along, and I’m here now 18 years, and a significant amount of that time here on this committee under the leadership of the Republicans…”

Edison is widely quoted as saying “Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.”