[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 10103-10104]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER CONTEMPT VOTE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. LEE of California. Mr. Speaker, let me first thank my colleagues 
in the Congressional Black, Hispanic, and Asian Pacific American 
Caucuses for coming to the floor to denounce the deeply partisan and 
divisive effort by congressional Republicans to hold Attorney General 
Holder in contempt. We need to be doing what the American people 
elected us to do, and that is to create jobs and to get our economy 
back on its feet.
  This contempt vote stands in stark contrast to our duties in 
Congress. We should be devoting our time to creating jobs, addressing 
our Nation's neglected infrastructure, and ensuring that student loan 
rates don't balloon starting next week.
  Too many hardworking American families are looking for their next 
paycheck, and yet this Tea Party-led Republican Congress is wasting 
precious legislative time and energy on a purely partisan effort to 
generate conflict where none exists.
  The Republicans' claims against Attorney General Holder defy belief. 
The simple fact is the Bush administration developed the inappropriate 
tactics, and once this Justice Department, under President Obama, 
learned about it, Attorney General Holder stopped the program--stopped 
it.
  So instead of handling our Nation's priorities, this Tea Party-led 
Republican Congress is choosing to stick its head in the sand, ignoring 
the wide range of documents and open cooperation provided by the 
Justice Department but now engage in a game of political theater with 
no regard for struggling families across America.
  The true motivation behind this contempt resolution is simple: As 
Leader Pelosi remarked last week, this is really about suppressing 
voter turnout.

[[Page 10104]]

The National Rifle Association, unfortunately, has insisted that their 
supported Members of Congress vote for it or face political peril.
  Let me tell you, these Tea Party Republicans don't like it when their 
ideological efforts to prevent people from voting get blocked by the 
Justice Department doing its job--and that's defending the Constitution 
of the United States. They know they can't win in judicial courts and 
they cannot win in the court of public opinion, so instead they're 
doing all they can to undermine the Justice Department by dragging 
Attorney General Holder through the mud, making endless demands, 
changing the goal posts, and monopolizing his time so that they can 
continue their efforts to undermine the democratic process. And they're 
asking for information that would violate the law. Furthermore, this is 
unprecedented. The House has never voted to hold an Attorney General in 
contempt.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people are sick and tired of seeing these 
Tea Party Republicans pursue a senseless and destructive agenda. 
There's a reason that Congress has the lowest approval rating in 
history, and it has everything to do with efforts like this--a contempt 
vote that does nothing to improve the economy, does nothing to create 
jobs, and does nothing to strengthen our middle class or to help those 
trying to raise themselves out of poverty.
  We need to invest in transportation, in education, and in ensuring 
above all that jobs and jobs and more jobs are added to our economic 
recovery. We only have a matter of weeks before Congress effectively 
shuts down for the August recess, and we cannot waste any more time 
doing anything other than putting Americans back to work. Jobs should 
be our number one priority, our number two priority, and our number 
three priority.
  So I join my colleagues in the tri-caucuses calling for an end to 
this useless path of petty politics. Let us work during the remainder 
of time we have this congressional session to do the work that we were 
sent here to do. No more political witch hunts, no more political 
fishing expeditions, no more excuses. It's time to get back to work.

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