Roy Cooper: “Every fair-minded Member of this House should be outraged at the rule we are being forced to debate under today. Two…”

“Every fair-minded Member of this House should be outraged at the rule we are being forced to debate under today. Two hours, a giant piece of legislation will be rammed through this House in 2 hours, less than 15 seconds per Member of this body; less than 15 seconds for each 700,000 group of constituents that we have the honor of representing; less than 15 seconds each to talk about over one-half of all the domestic discretionary spending of the United States of America; less than 15 seconds per Member to talk about the defense budget of the United States at a time of war; less than 15 seconds per Member to talk about a defense budget that is larger than every other defense budget in the world put together; less than 15 seconds per Member to talk about the needs of our troops in the field while they are fighting a war. There will be no real debate allowed under this rule for properly funding our troops. It is true, thank goodness, that finally under pressure that the Republicans have put in $25 billion to fund our troops in kind of an emergency supplemental, but the truth is our troops need more money than that. They are running out of money now. Let me repeat, our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are running out of money now. The Pentagon is already having to raid every cookie jar in the building to try to fund their needs. We should do better by our troops. We should fully fund their needs.”