Rob Woodall: “I very much appreciate the chairman for yielding me the time. I have the great pleasure serving on the Rules Committee.…”

“I very much appreciate the chairman for yielding me the time. I have the great pleasure serving on the Rules Committee. I also have the great pleasure of serving on the Budget Committee. So I felt it incumbent to come down and talk a little bit about the Byrd rule process that goes on in the Senate. It is part of the 1974 Budget Act. It became a custom in the Senate during 1985 and 1986, and ultimately it was codified and put in the act permanently. To describe what went on in the Senate as some sort of proofreading error is just nonsense, just absolute nonsense. We have this process called reconciliation that allows the Congress, the House, and the Senate to get really tough things done. As a part of that process, the Byrd rule says: What we don't want to do is get involved in extraneous issues. We want to stay focused on these issues that are most important to the American people. So if you try to get outside the lanes of fundamental tax reform, those provisions become what they call ``Byrdable.'' But, Mr. Speaker, you are probably as uplifted as I am by the conversation you hear about the importance of bipartisanship and collaboration. I wish that that were more true. What we saw yesterday in the United States Senate I would tell you is a little bit of the pettiness that we see on Capitol Hill.…”