Barney Frank: “while I am not an expert in time management, I do have a suggestion that would allow the House to better use its time.…”

“while I am not an expert in time management, I do have a suggestion that would allow the House to better use its time. Last night we spent well over an hour here, a lot of very busy people, while the leadership variously cajoled, bribed, browbeat, et cetera, a few Republicans who wanted to have it both ways, who wanted to give people the impression they were opposed to CAFTA while they were ready to cave in for sufficient inducement. What we should have done, and I propose this for the future, is the next time we have one of those tough votes where they are going to have to do that with their Members, let us schedule an evacuation drill from the House. The fact is at the time the plane was flying over here and a roll call was open and we evacuated the House, it took about the same time as it took them to cajole and blackmail and browbeat their people last night. So why not do two things at once? The next time they know there is a bill they are going to cram down people's throats that they do not want to vote for and want to pretend to their voters they are against it, and it is going to take them an hour or 2 to find out ways to get them to help fool people, why not schedule in advance an evacuation drill, and that way we can kill two birds with one stone? And since people might not know it is a drill, they can threaten people who do not vote with them: They can make them stay here in case there is a plane crash. ____________________”