John Tierney: “Woman, I yield myself 3 minutes. This amendment is offered in its entirety as a substitute for the underlying bill and…”

“Woman, I yield myself 3 minutes. This amendment is offered in its entirety as a substitute for the underlying bill and the manager's amendment to it. I do it because I strongly believe that this is, in fact, a better proposal than the existing one, but would have preferred what could have been the best result in this bill, which would have been one where all of the Members had had consultation and where all of the negotiations had occurred and we were able to bring forth a bill with concessions by both sides to get a bill that would have been assured of passage in the Senate, or close to that, assured the President's signature and assured the support of the broad public. Instead, just as in the last session, we end up with a proposal that ignores sound proposals from both sides and that goes with a hyper- partisan approach, and that's not going to serve the country or this process at all. Having a chance to present 18 amendments, as was done in the last session, and having them all essentially shot down on a party-line vote is not an excuse or a substitute for having a process in which we really try to work out our differences and make reasonable concessions. This bill that's before us today by the majority party was filed on February 25. A so-called ``hearing'' occurred on February 26, the very next day, at which two of the three Republican witnesses admitted they had never read the bill.…”