Rob Woodall: “I would advise my friend that I am prepared to close when he is. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance…”

“I would advise my friend that I am prepared to close when he is. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, in spite of the fact that this is the most closed Congress in the history of the United States, I believe in giving credit where credit is due. This WRDA bill is a bill that is the product of a bipartisan process. I applaud the chairman, Mr. Shuster, and the Ranking Democrat, Mr. DeFazio, on working together, and all the members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure coming together to try to come to an accommodation that resulted in this bill. I regret very much that, despite their good work, in some backroom in the Rules Committee somewhere, the majority decided to rip out a bipartisan provision that the chairman and ranking member had agreed on. Then, making that even worse, the chairman and the ranking member had an amendment to try to at least have a debate on the floor and let the Members decide that issue, but the Rules Committee decided not to make that in order as well. Anyway, I don't want to be too picky. Overall, the WRDA bill is good. It will get a bipartisan vote. Of the three appropriations bills--this new approach where we bunch everything together so we don't have a lot of time to talk about them-- two of the appropriations bills are fine. There would be, I think, a pretty big bipartisan vote. The Legislative Branch Appropriations bill would pass with a strong bipartisan vote.…”