[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 197 (Tuesday, December 20, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H10000]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AN INSULT TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. I want to follow my friend from Missouri 
and add my appreciation to the troops who have come home and to their 
families, and I thank my colleagues for joining in wearing a yellow 
ribbon in honor of them. I hope they will go home and do the same and 
will encourage their communities to do so.
  But I am standing here to confront the hypocrisy and the joke of my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle in suggesting that the 
conferees are meeting when they full well know that no conferees are 
meeting, because no one has been appointed except the one-sided 
conferees.
  Frankly, they want us to be Americans first, not Tea Partiers, not 
lovers of the special interests. The other body put forward a very 
thoughtful initiative to keep us going so that the lights will not be 
turned off in some poor mother's home and so that some senior citizen 
can still go to his doctor. They wanted to make sure 2.3 million and 
134,000 people in Texas would have their unemployment. I'm saddened by 
this crisis. I'm here to work. I'm going home for an emergency, and 
I'll be back.
  The lady who went off the floor should not have been confronted that 
way. She spoke. She's ready to work. What about the empty chairs on the 
other side? They are not ready to work. It's all about a joke. This is 
an insult to the American people.

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