DENNIS A. CARDOZA: “I enjoy the comments and the colloquy that my colleague from Texas and I and the rest of the committee engage in. We…”

“I enjoy the comments and the colloquy that my colleague from Texas and I and the rest of the committee engage in. We seem to have this conversation quite a bit these days. I'd like to remind the gentleman that, while it's true that we have made three amendments in order this year, two Republican and one bipartisan, last year there were four Democratic amendments made in order on this particular appropriations bill. The prior year, however, there were 11 amendments offered in committee, and only one Democratic amendment was offered in this bill. Why I raise this number, I want to point out that this is not unusual for this Legislative Branch appropriations bill to be a structured rule in prior years. And, in fact, there's good reason for that. My distinguished colleague from California, Mr. Dreier, mentioned in committee yesterday, in fact, that there is potential for demagoguery on both sides of the aisle on this Legislative Branch appropriations bill, and that he has agreed in the past, and this year, on a structured rule. Now, honorable men and women can disagree on the merit and the substance of particular amendments, the number of which are not as important as the fact that we are arguing about substantive language, about health and safety, about meeting our constituents' needs. And I think it's important that we talk about that substance, rather than just the number on the bill.”