Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, so much for regular order. The bill before us today has not received a hearing in committee where witnesses could have testified about its effects. It has not gone through the markup process so that the committee of jurisdiction could actually debate and offer amendments to improve it. Moreover, we are about to vote on a bill with several provisions that no one has ever seen before last Wednesday, aside from a small group of Republican offices and special interests that have been working on the bill. Now, this closed-door process not only ignores the changing conditions of drought in California and how the State has already been adapting to meet water conservation needs, but it also ignores all of California's water provisions that were included, albeit at the last minute, in the WIIN Act last year, which is now Federal law. There has been no discussion, no hearing, no way to know how the provisions of this bill that overlap with the enacted law will actually be implemented by the Trump administration. This is legislating blind, and it is a bad idea. On some level, I do understand my Republican colleagues' fear of regular order on this bill. The more sunlight and public scrutiny that this bill gets, the uglier it looks. Make no mistake, if enacted, this bill will hurt a lot of people.…”