Hal Rogers: “I thank the chairman for yielding, and I rise in support of his bill. Mr. Speaker, this is around the 15th time that we…”

“I thank the chairman for yielding, and I rise in support of his bill. Mr. Speaker, this is around the 15th time that we have been trying to engage the other body in conversation about how we can reopen the government. They just simply refuse to talk about anything. We have sent over CRs. We have sent over amendments. We have sent over bills. This is the 11th of the many appropriations bills--CRs--at the sequester level that we are going to send to the Senate, and they just simply refuse to talk. I have never seen such a show of negligence and attendance to public duties. Normally, the time-honored tradition in the Congress--since the founding of this great country--is that, when the House passes a measure and when the Senate passes a measure and they differ, we appoint conferees: the Senate picks out some Members, the House picks out some Members, and we send them off to the back room to work out the differences and to bring the bills back. That is the way it has operated for all of these years. Yet the Senate just simply refuses to talk anything about how to reopen the government. This bill will help protect our homeland from terrorists, drug traffickers, smugglers, other criminals, and it facilitates legal immigration and ongoing investigations. Right now, our frontline operations are operating at a bare minimum.…”