Harold Volkmer: “what concerned me a little bit is listening to the debate on the previous rule, and I have not heard the debate on this…”

“what concerned me a little bit is listening to the debate on the previous rule, and I have not heard the debate on this mixup when I just walked in, but I was a little bit concerned, and some of us who may have that concern, it may not amount to anything for the future. But I just want to say that my concern is that these bills, which are noncontroversial, and like, as has been said, have been utilized on the Suspension Calendar, or even by unanimous consent, because there is no controversy; but to use a rule procedure in an open rule procedure leaves some of us to concern ourselves about the future, that since there was a statement made by the chairman of the Committee on Rules early on in this session that when we got rid of this 2-year cycle, when we looked back over the 2 years, that we would find that 70 percent of the bills were under an open rule. Now what concerned me is that we are going to see little-bitty bills that are not of any controversial nature at all under open rules, and we can have a whole bunch of those, and then we see a very controversial bill come along that does not have an open rule, and then when we look at the average out and a percentage, the percentage is what the chairman said. Now I am not saying that that is going to happen. I am just saying that is a concern of mine as the utilization of the rule process rather than using unanimous consent or rather than using suspensions, and only time will tell.…”