Richard B. Nugent: “House Resolution 260 is a structured rule that provides House consideration of amendments to this year's National…”

“House Resolution 260 is a structured rule that provides House consideration of amendments to this year's National Defense Authorization Act. As I explained when I was down here yesterday, the Rules Committee receives hundreds of amendments to the NDAA every single year. This time we had 299 amendments to make our way through. While the volume of amendments was massive, the Rules Committee evaluated each and every one in developing this rule. We were not able to make every amendment in order, but I believe this rule will allow for the exhaustive debate of a vast majority of the issues presented in committee. Yesterday's rule provided for 1 hour of general debate on the underlying bill, H.R. 1960. Today, we're considering a structured rule that provides Members of the House with the opportunity to have copious and free-flowing debate on many of the issues contained in the underlying legislation. As a member of both the Rules Committee and the Armed Services Committee, I know how complicated and far-reaching the National Defense Authorization Act can be. I've sat through multiple subcommittee marks on this legislation. We had a nearly 16-hour-long full committee markup on this bill, a meeting that started early Wednesday and lasted into Thursday morning. And now we've had two Rules Committee hearings on this bill, including yesterday's hearing, which took almost 10 hours from start to finish.…”