Tom Latham: “I rise today to express shock in the way this spending bill has been written and dumped into our laps, sight unseen…”

“I rise today to express shock in the way this spending bill has been written and dumped into our laps, sight unseen, except by a few members of the Democratic Leadership. This supplemental bill has been crafted without the input of rank and file members, completely circumventing the committee process. There have been no hearings, no debates, no amendments allowed and about 18 hours to review this enormous bill. We now have a few members of the house, substituting their judgement on serious wartime funding issues, for the other 430 Members of both parties. Think about that for a minute. You and your colleagues have had no say in this bill--none. Again, members will have had 18 hours to review this 250 billion dollar spending bill. This is very troublesome to me as a member of the people's house and I know, for a fact, that it's troublesome to members from both sides of the aisle. Today, the 3 million citizens of my State of Iowa, and millions of other Americans--which, by the way, include soldiers serving overseas and their families waiting for their safe return--will have no say in how their tax dollars are being spent for our military. Whatever your position is on the war, or any Federal spending in this bill, the Speaker has set a terrible precedent for this institution. To the extent that we value precedent around here, this is not the type of bad precedent we should be allowing. Both democrats and republicans deserve better, and we deserve a voice.”