Patricia Schroeder: “I take the floor to talk about a very serious promise that I think has been broken. Early on, we heard a lot of people…”

“I take the floor to talk about a very serious promise that I think has been broken. Early on, we heard a lot of people talking about how wonderful it was that we were going to have open rules, open rules when we discussed issues in this Congress, and everybody said, oh, that's great, and finally we are going to be able to discuss everything fully and so forth. Well, next week we are going to be bringing the Armed Services Committee bill to the floor, and I know it is now called the National Security Committee, but that bill comes to the floor. I have served on that committee for 22 years, and we have always brought it to the floor under an open rule. I hear this time it is going to be closed. They are going to narrow it down and it is going to be closed. Today we just ended the foreign affairs bill that has been on the floor. We used to call it foreign aid. Now it has got some other fancy title. It is basically foreign aid. But let me tell you, it is under a very narrow, narrow, narrow rule in which many of us are not going to be able to discuss some very critical issues in there.”