Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2997, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 2997, AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010 -- (House of Representatives - July 08, 2009)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina. I'm sorry for throwing you off a minute ago. I certainly appreciate the time.
I speak against this rule, Mr. Speaker, simply because it's a closed rule. You know, we come here, 435 Members representing 300 million people all across the United States of America with different ideas, and we are about to vote on a $123.8 billion bill in which these 435 Members of Congress have different ideas of how to change it.
Now, you know the expression, you're dressed up with no place to go. That's what it's like being on the Appropriations Committee. Maybe even rehearsing for a dance, and when you get to the dance, you find out you're not even allowed to dance. Well, that's what happens.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentlewoman.
If you think about it, Mr. Speaker, some of the good ideas of Democrats melding--cross-pollination now--with good ideas of Republicans and good ideas of Independents, I think that would be a very healthy thing. And then this bill would go out of this Chamber to the other body, which we know has no good ideas whatsoever--just joking there. A little levity on the House floor is okay.
The point is we could get together as Democrats and Republicans on the House floor and then go debate the Senate, and maybe our ideas would prevail. And those ideas wouldn't necessarily be branded as Democrat or Republican, but they would be branded as American ideas, and they would be of a representative democracy.
So I hope we will vote this rule down and send it back to the Rules Committee, and then we will challenge that vast eternal plan--maybe not the one of the Democrat Party, but maybe the one of our forefathers--that envisioned open debate in an open society as an underpinning of democracy.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source