Maxwell Frost: “Mr. Speaker, I am going to make a lengthy statement in just a moment, but I think it should be made clear to people who…”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to make a lengthy statement in just a moment, but I think it should be made clear to people who may be watching this on television, listening to this, Members listening to this in their offices or watching it, what is really going on here today. We have a noncontroversial bill, the AMBER alert bill, that was passed unanimously by the Senate both last year and this year; and we have an omnibus bill with all kinds of provisions, the AMBER alert provision being one of those that has now been reported out of the committee. While this omnibus bill passed the House in the last session, it did not pass the Senate because there are a number of provisions that the Senate finds objectionable. So what we are doing is we are holding hostage the AMBER bill, the stand-alone AMBER bill, because some Members in the other party want an omnibus crime bill with controversial provisions. If the leadership on the other side would simply let us have a separate vote on the AMBER provisions that have already passed the Senate unanimously this year, those would be passed by this House immediately and then could be sent to the President for his signature, but that is not what is being done today.”