[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4827]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     CIVICS LESSONS FOR REPUBLICANS

  (Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I had not intended to speak, but after 
listening to these two people talk about what the House is doing, I 
think we are going to have to have some civics lessons around here for 
Republicans. They never followed the regular order.
  The way things are supposed to happen in the House is you drop in a 
bill and it goes to committee, and you have hearings, and you have 
markups, and you work off the floor before you bring things to the 
floor. When the Republicans were in control, they never had committee 
hearings, they never had anybody come in, they never had any markups. 
It was all written in the Speaker's Office and brought to the Rules 
Committee and put out on the floor without any preparation.
  This Congress is preparing issues that will be brought to the floor 
over the next several months. We are not asleep. We are just doing the 
regular order, which is going to committee.
  In the Ways and Means Committee today we discussed global warming. 
There wasn't one single hearing in this House on global warming when 
the Republicans were in session, and yet it is the biggest issue facing 
this Nation.

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