Jim Costa: “Tomorrow afternoon we will board our flights back to the district for the August recess. Sadly, we'll be leaving behind…”

“Tomorrow afternoon we will board our flights back to the district for the August recess. Sadly, we'll be leaving behind a lot of unfinished business. Just yesterday, the Republican leadership pulled the catastrophe of a transportation and housing appropriations bill because it couldn't even get the votes within their own caucus. I ask my friends, when are we going to begin to govern and work together? When we come back from the August recess period, we will have 9 days, just 9 days left until the farm bill extension expires. But we're leaving the House without passing a true farm bill that we can conference, much less appointing any conferees to work out the differences between the two bills. The farmers, ranchers and dairymen expect better in my district. Uncertainty swirls around the Capitol, but the only thing that seems certain here lately is that we cannot act on anything that the American people want us to that they view as no-brainers. Take immigration reform. Over half the voters in this country think we should get this done and pass the Senate bill. Yet we are watching the summer fade into fall without even a timeline for when the House will bring up real immigration reform. It's far too easy for us to throw up our hands and say this place is broken, but that's not why we came to Washington. No budget, little in appropriations bills, no tax reform, little progress on immigration reform, and no farm bill.…”