Barney Frank: “I once again skirt the rules of the House by taking note of the fact that people not in this Chamber may be watching us.…”

“I once again skirt the rules of the House by taking note of the fact that people not in this Chamber may be watching us. And I am particularly concerned about members of the Iraqi National Assembly, the newly elected Parliament which we are trying to instruct in democracy. They may be observing this procedure by which this House deals with a number of very important and controversial issues, some of which I fully support, some of which I question. But as they watch us deal with this, it is being dealt with in a manner in which no amendments are allowed, in which only 40 minutes total of debate are allowed. And it is a bill brought forward because the committee leadership didn't like what happened when the House actually voted on it in a democratic manner. You will remember this bill came before us, many of the elements of this bill some time ago, and the House, working its will, voted to include an amendment to the hate crimes section. That appalled many Members of the majority. In fact, we read in some of the newspapers, members of the majority of the Republican Study Committee lamented the fact that the leadership had actually given the House membership a chance to vote. They said, we can't allow that to happen, we can't allow democracy to be running rampant on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. So today we have the antidote to democracy.…”