On the recordFebruary 11, 2015
To say to the gentleman from Texas, my heart sits where his hearts sits--with American workers and American products. We build the best products in the world. There is absolutely no reason not to purchase the best products in the world to build something particularly as important as our pipeline. The box we find ourselves in is that, candidly, some of us--in fact, I dare say all of us--are a little surprised the Senate was even able to move through this bill. I have not seen the Senate move like it has moved in this open process, in this expedient process. In the entire 4 years I have served in this institution, I have never seen it happen before. It is a good bill. I don't take issue with the work the Senate did. It looks substantially similar to what we passed here in the House. We may never get a chance to send this bill to the desk. Again, we are just trying to debate a small part of the appropriations process and the Senate right now can't even move into debate because of filibusters in the Senate. So I say to my friend from Texas, I am absolutely sympathetic to his amendment. I would like to have an opportunity to debate more amendments on the floor of this House. I think back to my early days here 4 years ago. We had a 3\1/2\-day what I call festival of democracy. We came down here and worked night and day on H.R. 1 until every Member had a chance to be heard. That is the way it ought to be done.…
