Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “We thank the gentleman from South Carolina so much for joining us. Your expertise is incredibly helpful in terms of us…”

“We thank the gentleman from South Carolina so much for joining us. Your expertise is incredibly helpful in terms of us highlighting the problems that we are trying to address in this Chamber. Do you know how I would analogize the fact that the Republican leadership has now allowed the drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to be added to the Defense appropriations bill, that they have actually agreed to that? I would analogize it this way, and analogize the addition of any extraneous material, campaign finance reform, well, I would say, we almost would have to say ``reverse campaign finance reform,'' because the 527 legislation that they are talking about is more insidious, not being done in a way that would be designed to help add to the public discourse. But the addition of campaign finance issues or oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to the Defense appropriations bill, the way I would analogize it is similar to insurgents in Iraq and in other areas of the world using children as shields. When our troops go into a neighborhood in Iraq and the insurgents put women and children in front of them so that they get killed instead of the insurgents, that is exactly what the Republican leadership is trying to do here. They are trying to put things in that they cannot get passed on their own because they cannot stand on their own merits.…”