David Skaggs: “let me just say, I have discussed with the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton], who I believe is scheduled to have the…”

“let me just say, I have discussed with the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton], who I believe is scheduled to have the hour special order following this one, and I think the country will be well served by a real give-and-take kind of debate on this very important issue of amending the Constitution to require a two-thirds vote by both the House and the Senate. So I expect we are going to be yielding back and forth a lot for some questions and answers on both my time and the time of the gentleman from Texas later on. I hope it will be a useful, enlightening and serious discussion about this proposal which is way past due, because we have not had a serious, enlightened and careful discussion of this before it gets to the floor later today. In fact, the procedures that the majority has followed in scheduling this matter for the floor on April 15 really makes a mockery of the regular order that ought to be followed in bringing something of this substance and moment to the House for a vote. Mr. Speaker, I spoke about that a little bit earlier. I am not going to belabor it again now. I do want to remind my colleagues that I, because of the abuse of process that the majority has followed in bringing this up without any vote in committee, any markup in committee, any time for Members to really examine it, I really think all possible procedural rights ought to be exercised, at least at this point in the process.”