Roy Blunt: “This week, we're in the week before we break for our annual Memorial Day work period. Historically, this has been a time…”

“This week, we're in the week before we break for our annual Memorial Day work period. Historically, this has been a time when we recognized those who have served and those who are serving, those who are willing to give even their life to help protect the freedom of this country. This is a time-honored tradition in our country. It's today that we finally come to the floor, after literally months and months of a request for this funding for troops, nearing the deadline where troop withdrawal notices or troop furlough notices and other furlough notices would go out, and we come to the floor with a bill that puts restrictions on the troops. We come to the floor with a bill that does, in fact, finally meet those funding needs of the troops. And we come in a way that doesn't allow us to have any different ideas, have any amendments to these provisions that are brought to us today. This is an extraordinary procedure in the way we have handled supplementals in the past. The only supplementals that have ever been brought to the floor in the last 20 years, with a closed rule, were supplementals where both sides agreed that we had to immediately respond to an immediate emergency, and it was a bipartisan agreement. There is no bipartisan agreement on the way this bill is brought to the floor. And because of that, it does not meet the needs of the troops as it should. The restrictions are wrong. The time line is wrong.”