Kendrick Meek: “I do not want to be greedy on the time, but I just have to say this to my colleagues, what happened? Was it the…”

“I do not want to be greedy on the time, but I just have to say this to my colleagues, what happened? Was it the gentleman from New Jersey (Chairman Smith) that stood up and said, we are going to do the right thing. A Republican chairman. We are going to do the right thing by our veterans, and I am going to pass a budget that is going to help the veterans. You know what happened to him. They moved him off the committee. He lost his chairmanship. This is not the Wasserman Schultz/Ryan/Meek story. This happened and veterans throughout this country know it happened. So when we start talking approximate issues such as Social Security; we start talking about Medicare when we were told $350 billion and now it is up to $724 billion; when we start talking about issues such as Leave No Child Behind authorization bill far beyond what the appropriations actually is, folks have to pay attention to this. And I will guarantee you this, if we had the opportunity to run this House, this would be a nonissue. As a matter of fact, we would be working in a bipartisan way to correct some of these issues. We are not saying Democrats will do it. No. Democrats and Republicans and the one Independent in this House will do it. So this is so very, very important. You know something, I do not care. I hope that there is a Member in a leadership position right now that is listening that is saying we have got to change this because the pressure is being applied by the Democratic side of this aisle.…”