Providing for Consideration of HR 1433, District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1433, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2007

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Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank my friend from Texas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York was making a great argument for the bill itself, but we are talking about the rule. We are talking about the ability of every Member of this body to be able to amend the bill. We go through a committee process here, well, I shouldn't say all the time, because in the 110th Congress, it has been very rare that we have gone through a regular order. But in this particular case we did go through a regular order as far as the bill going to Government Reform.

I had an amendment. The amendment was pretty simple. It said, notwithstanding the fact that the District of Columbia would get a vote on the floor of this body, but that the intention, and the end result, was for them not to have representation in the United States Senate.

Now, that was fairly simple. In fact, I believe it passed Government Reform unanimously. My 700,000 people that I represent in Georgia had an opportunity to amend this bill.

But because of the closed rule that we have today, an amendment that was passed, agreed to by both sides, put in the bill in Government Reform, has come to the floor without it.

You know, this was hyped up to be the most ethical Congress. I haven't seen any proof of that. It has been hyped up to be the most open Congress where all Members would have an opportunity to participate. We certainly haven't seen that.

This is government almost by gradualism. We are gradually getting to where the leadership of the majority party wants to go. I believe that is to give D.C. the ability to have Members of Congress.

Now, this little book right here, the gentleman from New York was quoting parts of the Constitution, but he didn't quote all of it. Because in here I think it lays out very plainly who is to vote on the floor of this House and who is to have representation in this House, and who is to have representation in the United States Senate.

I think this is the first step. I think my amendment made it clear that the intention of this bill was not to gradually give them the ability to have seats in the Senate. But because it made it so clear and described so clearly the legislative intent of this body, they won't allow it to be in the bill, because their intention is to go further.

I would hope that one day we would. I hear people's lips, I hear things coming out of people's mouths. I see lips moving, talking about bipartisanism: we are going to be bipartisan; we are going to let everybody participate.

I haven't seen that in action. Let me say this, I don't think anybody has ever written a perfect bill, a bill that couldn't be adapted or expanded or explained a little bit better, a bill that couldn't be made better, a bill that couldn't be perfected.

In fact, if you read the rules of this House, it talks about amendments and perfection and perfecting the amendment, perfecting the bill. That is all we want an opportunity to do. I think everybody in this body, all 435 of us, I think the people that we represent, all they want us to have is an opportunity to try to help perfect the bill or make it better.

So far, we have been shut out of that process. I think it is a shame. As my friend, Mr. Bishop, said, a lot of people don't pay any attention to the process up here. But when the process is broken, the product is flawed.

I think the closed rule on this important bill is an example that this is a very broken process.

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