Jim Baird: “I thank my ranking member. The gentleman from Wisconsin is well intentioned. We all, I think, recognize the need to…”

“I thank my ranking member. The gentleman from Wisconsin is well intentioned. We all, I think, recognize the need to reduce the size of this deficit. {time} 1630 But there is an irony here, and the irony is this: The gentleman spoke about the need for transparency and accountability. I absolutely agree. But I would ask my friends on the majority side, if we are talking about transparency, why is it that time after time after time you bring bills before this body, giving us less than 24 hours to read them? Ironically, this bill gives the President 45 days to look at legislation before filing a rescission, and then we have 14 legislative days to act on that. You do not give us 14 hours to read the original bills. We offered in the Budget Committee a proposal that would give us 72 hours, a mere 3 days, to read thousands of pages, spending hundreds of billions of dollars. It is was ruled out of order. Why is it that in our effort to establish fiscal responsibility we do not take responsibility ourselves, we hand it to the President and say keep us from sinning once again? We have the authority within this body to review legislation if we would just insist that the Rules Committee pass a 72-hour rule and enforce it, not override it with the appropriately named ``martial law'' rules that they do. Let us require a full two-thirds vote of this institution before any bill is brought to this floor with less than 72 hours to read.…”