Sam Farr: “I rise with some concern about the process here in the United States House of Representatives. I am a proud member of…”

“I rise with some concern about the process here in the United States House of Representatives. I am a proud member of the Committee on Appropriations, and I am proud of the work we do there. I am also very proud of the Chair, who I think manages that committee very fairly. But something happened on the way through the process here that stinks. The committee worked very hard to try to pay for the needed costs of what has happened in this country since we were here last year, the unexpected costs; and that is why this bill is needed. This is an emergency bill. It provides additional funds to pay for essentially contingencies that were not anticipated; and as we have heard, 9-11 is the biggest of those. But also there is an old adage here that says this is the only train that is going to make it all the way to the White House, and if you want to be on that train, you better load up. I think that the committee did a good job of making sure that this was not a big pork process and that it did not load up too much; and that is always a tough bipartisan effort to put out a good bill. But after the bill was put out of the committee, it went to the Committee on Rules, and there the word came down that this bill was going to be beefed up.”