Steven Holt: “I very much thank the ranking member of the subcommittee. Now, why, the Republicans say, are we not eagerly endorsing…”

“I very much thank the ranking member of the subcommittee. Now, why, the Republicans say, are we not eagerly endorsing their plan? Now suppose someone comes into your neighborhood, builds a barrier around your house, a fence, locks you and your family out, won't let you in. Two days later, they come to you magnanimously and say we've modified your house; we'll let you into one room. And they can't understand why we don't enthusiastically embrace that deal. That's what you're offering here. Of course we should be funding the National Park Service. Of course we should be funding the CDC and food inspections. Bring up the clean CR and we will do it. Mr. Speaker, today the Tea Party continues its reckless and damaging government shutdown. Yet in an effort to distract from their irresponsibility, they have offered what they claim is a compromise: to reopen only those agencies of government which they deem, for their own political reasons, to be necessary. This notion--that the Tea Party can pick and choose which agencies of government to reopen--proceeds from a false premise. It is based on the idea that the Tea Party, which represents one faction of one party in one house of Congress, possesses the unilateral authority to choose which parts of government are worthy and which are unworthy. This idea is wrong-headed, it is arrogant, and it is astonishingly irresponsible.…”