John Bel Edwards: “in my 14 years in the House, the introduction of this bill this afternoon is the most cynical charade I have ever seen.…”

“in my 14 years in the House, the introduction of this bill this afternoon is the most cynical charade I have ever seen. This bill, they did not even know what bill number to put on this. They had to mark out one bill number and put another. They had to hand write part of this. What a sorry way to deal with the needs of 24,000 military families, the need to get better housing. I think it is interesting that the gentleman from Iowa, the very person who within the next couple of hours is going to kill our opportunity to solve a military housing crisis, is at the moment trying to get us to pass a bill that a few hours ago had not even been introduced. It is also interesting that the same gentleman who introduced this bill, that says this is the solution to our military housing problem, then spoke on the floor just a minute ago saying the other body cannot pass anything. What reason do we have to believe that this is going to go anywhere? It is probably to go in a trash bin of fig leafs. And that is exactly what this is, and that is what bothers me more than anything. When the House Republican leadership this morning could have stood up for our military families, who deserve better housing, especially during a time of war, they were not only AWOL, they broke arms on the floor of this House for 25 minutes to see that Members voted for a rule that would get us into exactly the quagmire we are in at this moment. Shame on them for doing that.”