[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15962-15963]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            REPUBLICAN DELAY TACTICS ON APPROPRIATIONS BILLS

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I was hopeful at the beginning of this week 
that we were finally going to address America's homeland security needs 
and also increase funding for our veterans' health care by a 
significant amount, more than has been done, I think, in over 50 or 70 
years.
  But instead what we saw was a concerted effort by the Republican 
minority to delay every one of these appropriations bills: the Homeland 
Security bill that deals with our local responders, in response to 9/
11, and in the case of the Military Construction and Veterans bill, 
they constantly delayed our efforts to move a bill that was going to 
increase funding and benefits for our veterans.
  It really is awful to see what they've been doing all week in trying 
to delay and delay. If you go back to when the Republicans were in the 
majority, they weren't even able to pass the appropriations bills. They 
weren't even able to get their work done because they constantly 
delayed until they actually lost the election and never finished the 
bills.
  At the same time, they keep talking about spending. Well, every year 
when they were in the majority the amount of Federal spending continued 
to go up. The Democrats finally have gotten spending under control and 
at the same time trying to address the fact that we have this huge 
Federal debt, a legacy of the Republican majority over the last 12 
years.
  And what do the Republicans do? They constantly try to delay. I just 
hope that it's over today and we don't see more efforts to delay these 
important bills on the part of the Republican minority.

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