Floor Speech
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I was hopeful at the beginning of this week that we were finally going to address America's homeland security needs and also increase funding for our Veterans' health care by a significant amount, more than has been done, I think, in over 50 or 70 years. Instead, what we saw was a concerted effort by the Republican minority to delay every one of these appropriations bills. The homeland security bill, that deals with our local responders in response to 9/11, and in the case of the military construction and Veterans bill - they constantly delayed our efforts to move a bill that was going to increase funding and benefits for our Veterans. It really is awful to see what they have been doing, all week in trying to delay and delay. If you go back to when the Republicans were in the majority, they weren't even able to pass the appropriations bills. They weren't even able to get their work done because they constantly delayed until they actually lost the election and never finished the bills. At the same time, they keep talking about spending - well, every year when they were in the majority the amount of federal spending continued to go up. The Democrats finally have gotten spending under control and at the same time trying to address the fact that we have this huge federal debt -- a legacy of the republican minority, or republican majority over the last 12 years. And what do the republicans do? They constantly try to delay. I just hope that it's over today and we don't see more efforts to delay these important bills on the part of the Republican minority. |
