John Tierney: “I rise to discuss not the bill but the rule before us in this particular case. Since I came here some 6 months ago or 7…”

“I rise to discuss not the bill but the rule before us in this particular case. Since I came here some 6 months ago or 7 months ago, it seems that all I hear from the party that said over and over again while it was in the minority is how it was going to do things better when it became the majority; in fact, all we hear now is, when they do something that is totally unconscionable, well, you did it, too, or you did another version of it. In fact, that is not a good enough answer for people in this country, and I do not think people are going to be satisfied that this deliberative body or this body that is supposed to be deliberative spent virtually no time debating one of the more important bills that is going to come out of legislation this year. The real issue is not whether we have this particular tax cut or this spending bill this year. There are larger issues in this country, not the least of which is what is happening to working families and why we have companies reporting 15 percent profits and 1 percent additional revenues, and we know the difference is because they are squeezing that out of American workers. Those American workers have less health care benefits and they have less pension contributions, and they are told by employers that they are going to have the company move to Mexico or they are going to have replacement workers in if they try too hard to get a raise.”