Neil Abercrombie: “I feel like I almost have to conjure John the Baptist to get this across. Why are we debating a bill on the Andes when…”

“I feel like I almost have to conjure John the Baptist to get this across. Why are we debating a bill on the Andes when people are hurting all across this country right now today? If anything can be seen as showing the irrelevance of this Congress while people are losing their jobs all across this country, we cannot get a bill on this floor for a retail sales tax holiday. We cannot get the Travel America Now Act on this floor. But we can come in and get a bill so that drug dealers in the Andes can invest in gardening or anything else that they want to get into in order to come into this country and sell those products as well. Do you think for a second that the drug dealers are going out of business with this bill? We have got to come on this floor today and vote this down and demand that the Committee on Ways and Means come in here with bills that are going to address the economic problems that have happened since September 11. All this calm discussion on this floor completely bypasses what has happened to the people in this country. I am as hot as I can be about this because we are being ignored. I feel my heart pounding every day because I see people out of work.”