Sam Farr: “Thank you very much, Congresswoman Lowey, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, for those that may not understand what we're trying…”

“Thank you very much, Congresswoman Lowey, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, for those that may not understand what we're trying to do, all we have to do is pass one simple bill that was here in the House--the Senate gave it to us--and let's keep the government up for a number of days and continue to argue the other issues. But no, that's not what we're doing. We're taking that bill and just loading it up with a bunch of stuff that's been rejected time and time again. The consequence of that is you're not going to have a bill to the President tonight and the government will have to shut down. It's a huge mistake. And it's not something we do. We've never done it. In fact, in the time I've been here, we've had big partisan disputes. Our party fought vehemently against President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. We thought it was without evidence and certainly was going to cost the government a lot of money and probably not have a great outcome. We didn't shut down the government after we lost that debate. Instead, we tried to make it work. We fought against welfare reform. We thought that that reform of making everybody go to work even though they didn't know how to read and write--and mothers should be taking care of their children--we fought vehemently against it. And we lost. We didn't shut down government. We made it work. We fought again when Wall Street came in and said, Tomorrow, we fail. We thought, Well, it's the Republican watch. They're responsible for this.…”