Sam Farr: “Thank you, Ms. Slaughter, for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. This…”

“Thank you, Ms. Slaughter, for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. This process is about appropriations. That's how we keep government open. Unfortunately, we've never been able to get any of the appropriation bills to the floor because the Republicans won't appoint conferees to the joint committees, so we're doing a continuing resolution. The continuing resolution is not new in this Congress. It's been done every year. The shocking thing is it's never been used as a weapon of destruction until now. We were here last year, same argument. The health care bill is not the issue here. That's been law in this country for 3\1/2\ years. So for 3\1/2\ years, we've been appropriating money to keep government open. What's the difference now? The difference now is a new attitude, new breed, very mean, very conservative, very anti-government; and they're willing to bring their internal kind of power within their caucus to shut down the whole country, if not the whole world. It's totally irresponsible. They argue, well, we can do this if we could change the health care. If the health care bill needs changing, bring it up in a bill. That's how we change things. So I'm opposing this rule because this rule says, okay, let's bring up 10 parts of government. Let's bring up 10 parts. Let's just have multiple choice. Let's have a triage. Which parts of government do you like? I'd like to compliment my colleague, Mr.…”