Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 2847, Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEWIS of California. In exchange with my colleague, I was interested in his commentary regarding the number of amendments in the past on this bill and other bills like it. I too am very concerned about the time difficulty that we are having. I'd much prefer to have us get back to regular order where we'd have open rules on these bills.

But at this point in time, because of the requirements of the majority, the preprinting requirements, et cetera, there are a lot of Members who are very frustrated by this bill, and they'd like to make some serious changes, but they find themselves in a position where they can't provide amendments.

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Mr. LEWIS of California. We can continue this exchange. There is, as a result of the change in the rules and the way we can provide amendments, there had been as many as 127 amendments preprinted on this bill, 104 of them by the minority who feel they've essentially been cut out of the process. And because of that, and because of the importance of the issues that are a part of this bill, I cannot agree to a time limitation.

I think the time limitation you were discussing was like for 8 hours or something. I'm afraid my conference might very well have a revolution on its hands, and you might have a new ranking member.

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