I am really dumbfounded as to why we are here today. I sat back and I closed my eyes, and I remembered that my favorite grade was fifth grade, and now I remember why my favorite grade was fifth grade: because, as my colleague from Colorado has pointed out, I remember in fifth grade playing how a bill becomes a law, and I was the House and somebody else was the Senate and another set of our fifth graders were the Constitution. And what we learned is you have to pass a bill out of the House, it goes on to the Senate, it goes on to the President, he signs it, it becomes a law. Pretty simple. Well, here we are in fifth grade yet again. What I want to say here, Madam Speaker, is that I oppose the rule, I oppose the underlying bill. And I am recollecting that just over 1 year ago, we had this exact discussion about deem and pass. And so while an elephant never forgets, it seems that the party of elephants is just forgetting every day. And if this were only about mascots, forgetting would be okay. But it is not okay because it is not just about mascots; it is about the American people. So I want to remind the American people about the words of some of our leaders here in this House when deem and pass was put on the table just 1 year ago. Our now Speaker, John Boehner, called it a ``scheme and plot'' that set a precedent that was ``one of the most outrageous things that he had seen since he had been in Congress.'' That was on March 19, 2010.…
On the recordApril 1, 2011
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