On the recordDecember 12, 2012
I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. He will be our chairman next year, and I'm looking forward to his leadership. We are kind of setting the tone for what's going to happen next year. I said all through the fall, Mr. Speaker, that this was going to be that opportunity, that we were going to have to kind of define where this Congress was going to go for the next 2 years. I'd say to my friend from New York, for whom I have great respect and with whom I've enjoyed working on the Rules Committee for 2 years, Mr. Speaker, that this rule today does exactly what my constituents back home have asked me to come back to Washington to do. The gentlelady cited bill after bill after bill that I have been proud to support to try to rip the President's health care bill out by its roots. We absolutely worked hard at that. Of course, the Senate hasn't cooperated with us and the President hasn't cooperated with us, so we weren't able to get that done. What this rule does is to say let's move beyond those controversial topics, and let's move beyond those topics that we know we could jam through. For Pete's sake, there's a Republican majority in this House. We could jam through absolutely any piece of legislation we wanted to jam through. But what this rule says is that that's not the way to finish out the year. The way to finish out this year is to make sure that we're grabbing each piece of legislation out there that has bipartisan support.…
