Times That Try Men's Soul
Floor Speech
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Mr. BRIDENSTINE. I thank the gentleman from Texas. Thank you for your leadership here in the House of Representatives, and also thank you to my friend from California.
I would just like to maybe have a brief dialogue with the gentleman from Texas if that's okay.
It wasn't too long ago we passed a bill to fund the entire government. That was something that was hard for a lot of us to swallow because there's a whole lot of things in a continuing resolution that we're not, frankly, interested in funding, but we swallowed that pill because it defunded ObamaCare. We sent it to the Senate. Harry Reid stripped out the defunding, and he sent it right back to the House of Representatives.
So we said, Okay, let's just take 1 year. The President has already delayed major provisions of ObamaCare. He saw the jobs report. People were shifting from full-time work to part-time work. Some people were losing their jobs. People were losing their health insurance. Health insurance premiums were spiking. Companies were trying to get down below 49 employees. So we said, Okay, the President wants to delay major provisions of ObamaCare, let's give him a year. We'll delay it for a year and fund the entire government. Again, I voted for that.
I would just like to ask the gentleman from Texas, I'm new here. I've been here for 9 months now. We passed that at about 1 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night--I guess it was a Sunday morning--and the next day the Democrats didn't show up. The next day after that, they didn't even come in until 2 in the afternoon.
I would just, with your vast wisdom and experience, sir, maybe you could clarify for the American people what was going on. I mean, we're on the brink of a government shutdown and they just didn't show up. Was it maybe that they were looking for a shutdown?
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Mr. BRIDENSTINE. When you think about what we did last night, we talk about common ground a lot in the House of Representatives. It is a couple of words I hear all the time: common ground, common ground, common ground.
Here we had an opportunity last night in the midst of a government shutdown knowing that we have warriors coming back from the battlefield--I am one of them myself; I flew combat in Iraq and Afghanistan--and we wanted to pass a bill where there is strong common ground, we want to fund the Veterans Administration, we want to make sure that our veterans get the care they need.
Yesterday, on the floor of the House, the Democrats in this body killed that. Maybe you could shed some light on why they would want to do that?
Mr. GOHMERT. It sounds like the gentleman is basically asking a question like Dana Bash. Well, that would have helped veterans who are sick and need help and are seeking medical care and need their checks to finish getting the medication and things that they need.
The question that Senator Reid asked keeps resonating back as the Democratic answer: Why would we want to do that?
Mr. BRIDENSTINE. The only thing--and I have thought about this a lot--the only thing I can possibly think of why they would not want to fund the veterans is that they want to hold the veterans hostage for something else, namely ObamaCare. That is the only thing I can think of.
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