Jack Kingston: “I want to say to my friends on the Democrat side, they have made a lot of good points. I think there are a lot of good…”

“I want to say to my friends on the Democrat side, they have made a lot of good points. I think there are a lot of good points that have been made by the Republican side, too. I also want to remind my colleagues, because there are a lot of new people here who have been speaking with lots of righteous indignation about this, and I think their indignation is sincere, but veterans over there and veterans over here may remember September 14, 1999, when we had this exact same vote on a bipartisan basis. It passed 242 to 181. I have the voting list in my hand. I will be glad to share it with anybody. I do not choose to embarrass anybody by reading names, but I can tell my colleagues that every third name on here is a Democrat. I will say this to my Republican colleagues: Plenty of them voted no last time. This is not a bipartisan issue. This is not a finger-pointing issue, and this is not a racist issue. If it is, we are indicting a lot more than the author of this amendment, because plenty of folks voted yes last time, and plenty of folks voted no last time in each party. I have it right here in my hand. So I am just saying this: As many of my colleagues know, I can be just as partisan as some of the rest of us, but I am saying in this case, this is not a partisan issue, this is not a mean-spirited amendment.”