Steny Hoyer: “I ask that question because, when the Republicans were in the minority, they used to rail regularly about the…”

“I ask that question because, when the Republicans were in the minority, they used to rail regularly about the arbitrariness of the Committee on Rules controlled by the Democratic Party. That pushed them to the position that they could not reflect or debate on issues confronting the Congress. So what do we see? We see for some reason an incredible motivation to get out of town. This is January. We are beginning the session, the second session of the 104th Congress, the historic 104th Congress, as our Speaker, a historian himself, tells us regularly. So how do we begin this Congress? With one of the most arbitrary rules that we have. Is there precedent for such rules? Yes, there is. Did we utilize them? Yes, we did. When did we utilize them? At the end of sessions, either because we were going on summer break in August or we were going out of session in October or November or December so that we could accelerate the process at the end of sessions. But now we have a rule that says, at the very beginning, in the first instance, before we really do any substantive business, we are going to have a rule that says we will not take the time.”