[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 14576]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             SPENDING BILL

  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting listening to the 
parade of horribles recounted on the floor of the House today; but as a 
practical matter, in States like mine, in Oregon, people are going to 
get better coverage at lower costs--and California, New York, and 
Colorado, where people are actually working to implement the law rather 
than sabotage it.
  But this is a smokescreen. Obscuring the fact that when my Republican 
friends talk, for example, about spending in debt, they are actually 
afraid to allow the House of Representatives to vote on their own 
spending bill because their own Members won't vote for it. That is why 
it has been 2 months and we have never finished deliberation on the 
Transportation bill. They pulled the Interior bill all together. They 
even refused to allow to have a conference committee formed to 
reconcile the differences between the House and the Senate.
  It is a sad chapter when the fractured Republicans stand around when 
Americans deserve better. There is no reason the Senate could not have 
its bill before us today and the House Republican leadership bring us 
back into session. Instead, we are going to stall and stumble all we 
can up to the brink.

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