GPRA Modernization Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISSA. I thank the Speaker.

Madam Speaker, when Robert Johnson Shea recommended this bill before us, it wasn't this bill before us. This is a completely different bill, dramatically changed. So I believe that when people who will come and vote on this consider this, they should discount completely a recommendation from a Bush administration official that speaks to a bill that Mr. Cuellar authored which bears very little resemblance to this one.

As I said earlier, this bill today simply puts into statute what the President is already on an elective basis doing, ties the hands of a future President without providing any new authority for the President to do a better job.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ISSA. Madam Speaker, I think all was said that needed to be said in the 15 minutes a side last week. The only thing that can yet be said in my closing is we are better than this, Madam Speaker. We should not accept something on a closed rule without any possibility of amendment when in fact the Senate took what we had passed, completely amended it, and sent it back completely different.

Madam Speaker, I know that process is not something that is often talked about on this floor as though it is important. But, Madam Speaker, in the next Congress it is clear that process is important, that debate and deliberation is important, that we not simply take what the Senate takes, allow them to change it completely, send it back to us bearing no resemblance, and not have a conference.

If this bill is so important, as Mr. Cuellar says, that it be passed in a lame duck session, then Madam Speaker, isn't it so important that it should have gone through a conference process or at least that the Senate or House leaders would have come to the committee of jurisdiction and at least asked us what needed to be changed in order to get our support? They didn't have that support.

Like any bill, you will pick off a few Texans for a Texan's bill, or you will pick off a few Members, that doesn't make it bipartisan. It certainly wasn't bicameral when, in fact, Mr. Cuellar's bill was rewritten in the Senate; written by the White House, as far as I can tell, to look more like his budget process procedures that he printed back in February; sent back to us so that we could make in statute what the President chooses to do.

Madam Speaker, we are better than that. In the next Congress, I certainly believe that if the House and the Senate have differences of opinions, it is appropriate that it be worked out through a process of conference and not simply take what the Senate sends in a closed rule without anything but meaningless debate. And, Madam Speaker, debate without the opportunity to change one line is simply talking about a foregone conclusion that last Friday the votes were counted.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time hopefully for this lame duck session.

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