Sam Farr: “Thank you for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I'm an appropriator, like a lot of the speakers here today; and every time we have…”

“Thank you for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I'm an appropriator, like a lot of the speakers here today; and every time we have to deal with the CR, we're embarrassed. That's not our work. Our work is in appropriations bills, which we spend all year putting together. And we've been doing that. We were in the same situation last year, everything being the same. The Obama health care bill was in the law, Members of Congress had their insurance, and whatever issue was being brought up--we can't approve the CR because--those were the same issues last year. And guess what? We moved the CR without rancor and without partisan politics. So what's the difference here? I feel very sorry for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to now have to defend appropriations by choice. Ronald Reagan used to be fond of saying, Here we go again. And today, it's open choice. It's pick your government. We've got 10 items on the menu. Mr. Speaker, I want the whole menu, not just the Tea Party special. What an irony that we are bringing up the first of these menus, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Shut down the whole government, but we want to keep those emergency employees. I was a firefighter. I was a first responder. I was part of a team like the team that was lost in Arizona--the Hot Shot crew--when I was in college. They're not a part of FEMA. They're not a first responder. So firefighters are out.…”