On the recordFebruary 6, 2012
Once again, this is the amazing thing about politics. You can have an agreement and support completely the other side's opinion and still have a disagreement only in this House. I support getting this country back in line with our fiscal responsibility. We have a $15 trillion debt, and we've got to do something about it. We have an opportunity to have a bipartisan agreement, one that the President is asking for, one he included in his State of the Union as something to get done. If he cannot get his own party, if he cannot get the Senate to come along with his ideas, how are we the obstructionists? We want to sell properties. We want to sell the noncontroversial properties. Fourteen thousand properties have been identified as excess, underutilized properties that we could be moving immediately. We could be creating billions of dollars to pay down our debt. We could be redeveloping so many of these historic buildings that are sitting empty, creating jobs, getting these properties back on the tax rolls. This is a bipartisan solution that I'm amazed at some of the rhetoric tonight. Again, if the ranking member wants a guarantee, we'll give her a guarantee tonight. Bring up the amendment. We will voice vote it right now and she will have a guarantee it's in the bill. But yet she doesn't want to do it. So I have a separate amendment. If we cannot get the other side of the aisle to present theirs, we will present ours.…
