[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11966]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        IN CONTINUED SUPPORT OF THE TEXAS DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATORS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Chocola). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to follow my Waco, Texas, 
colleague. I come to the floor today to pay tribute, like my colleagues 
from Texas, to the very brave men and women of the legislature, those 
Texas heroes who have put their political lives on the line to ensure 
that the voting rights of all Texans will remain intact.
  Again, I want to personally thank my State representatives, and of 
course there are 53 of them totally, but Rick Noriega, Jessica Farrar, 
Joe Moreno, Senfronia Thompson, Kevin Bailey, Scott Hochberg, and the 
other dozens of Texas heroes.
  Yesterday, these Killer Ds, as they are now called, sent a letter to 
Texas Speaker Craddick, who I was honored to serve 13 years with in the 
statehouse. In this letter the members of the legislature said, 
``During recent interviews, you indicated you were not willing to 
negotiate with us regarding the issue of congressional redistricting. 
You stated you were concerned if you negotiated with us on this issue, 
we would break a quorum every time we disagreed with you on other 
important issues of the day, such as our school finance, health care 
and homeowners insurance.
  ``We want to clarify this point so that your concern is addressed and 
no ambiguity remains. We are here because we strongly feel that 
congressional redistricting should only be taken up every 10 years, 
unless otherwise ordered to do so by the courts, and that it should not 
be a priority above other issues facing our State.
  ``If you are willing to assure us that congressional redistricting 
will not be taken up by the House during the remainder of this session 
and the special sessions to come, then we are willing to give you our 
word, through this letter, that we will not break a quorum on other 
issues during that same time, even when we disagree.''
  And I am sure that there will be plenty of things to disagree about.
  ``We had no intention to break a quorum on issues following this one, 
and if you need this guarantee, then this letter provides it. In our 
system, negotiations and compromise are often the only way to make 
progress and improve our State. To that end and in that spirit, we 
respectfully ask you to accept our offer. We hope you will respond as 
soon as possible today, so we can return right away.''
  And, again, this letter was sent yesterday.
  ``There is a lot of work we can do, and we would like to get that 
work done.''
  During my 20-plus years as a State legislator, 13 as a State House 
member and 7 as a State Senator in Texas, the thing I treasured the 
most was the bipartisanship that existed in both our chambers. The 
problems occurring in the Texas Legislature now are not what is normal. 
I remember in my 20 years there that we had redistricting bills, and we 
fought them based on Democrats and Republicans. We had election code 
bills, and we fought based on Democrat and Republicans. But to have 
redistricting overshadow the important issues facing the State of 
Texas, or any State for that matter, I think is frustrating.
  We see sometimes that Washington politics, the partisan nature of 
that, has invaded our State legislatures. In all honesty, my friends on 
the Republican side that I have served with in the Texas Legislature 
both say we should sit down and talk about problems without it being 
such a partisan issue. Maybe we can learn something from our 
legislators here that say, wait a minute, we will fight over 
redistricting, we will fight over election codes, but when we talk 
about school finance, insurance reform, health care, or the State 
budget, you will not see us try to break a quorum in Texas.
  Today, this Fort Worth Star-Telegram said, and I quote, ``Once upon a 
time, Tom DeLay killed vermin and varmints and other disreputable 
critters for a living. Now he's trying to prove that he remembers how, 
by exterminating any remnants of bipartisanship in the Texas House.''
  And continuing the quote, ``Little does DeLay, the U.S. House 
majority leader, care if he incites a blood feud in Austin; he'd just 
as soon suck the Democrats dry in his lust to make himself master of 
the universe. In his insatiable ambition to obliterate the two-party 
system, DeLay apparently expected the Texas House Dems to roll over on 
their backs like roaches on Raid and let his water boys roar 
undisturbed through the Capitol with a new congressional district map.
  ``When Texas Democratic House members hightailed it north of the Red 
River, it wasn't to avoid thorny problems still facing the State. It 
was out of exasperation that neither Mr. DeLay nor Texas House Speaker 
Tom Craddick would let earnest, hard-working lawmakers of both parties 
focus on the vital business that the legislature ought to be spending 
its energy on as this session winds down.''
  Mr. Speaker, I served with Mr. DeLay as a State legislator. I served 
with a lot of Members on the Democratic and Republican side, and I 
would hope that we could get past this partisan issue and let those 
folks go back and deal with the problems we have in the State of Texas. 
Hopefully, we will learn something from them and develop a better 
bipartisan spirit up here.

                          ____________________