Jim Nussle: “I want to thank the Committee on Rules for their diligent work in bringing this to us as quickly as possible. I wish it…”

“I want to thank the Committee on Rules for their diligent work in bringing this to us as quickly as possible. I wish it was an open rule, too, but I believe this is a good start, and I commend both the Democrat and minority members for their help in doing this. I want to thank my amendment cosponsors for their work in bipartisan solution to this problem. There are really three goals, I think, we need to achieve here today. Goal 1 is to provide assistance to the people of the earthquake, the people of the flood. We need to get it out there as quickly as possible. Goal 2, pay for the assistance. I think we can do that by supporting the Nussle amendment. It pinches everybody and cuts the low-priority problems out of there. It sets priorities. Ask yourself this question: Are any of the things we cut so important that they should not at least wait a few moments while we provide assistance to the victims? A third goal is fix the system so that we never have to spend any more time dealing with this in the future.”