Charles Rangel: “this motion to recommit gives us the final opportunity to bring some thread of responsibility to what we are doing this…”

“this motion to recommit gives us the final opportunity to bring some thread of responsibility to what we are doing this evening, and that is to make certain that we do not jeopardize Social Security; that we do not really make the people pay for the tax cut by taking it out of the Social Security trust fund. They have hidden in this bill the ability to borrow an additional $750 billion, and shame on them for doing it in the middle of the night. We could have felt so proud, our colleagues could have made us proud. On this Memorial Day they could have made us feel like we were somebody; that we were in the House of Representatives, not Republicans and Democrats, but those who wanted to support our troops overseas, those who wanted to support the President, those who wanted to fight against terrorism. That flag would have flown in every parade in every county, in every city for all of us as Members of the House of Representatives. Instead of that, our colleagues wanted to save a couple of Republican seats. They determined that there were people more sick in a Republican district than in a Democratic district. They determined they had to pay off for votes that they picked to unravel international trade agreements. They missed one heck of an opportunity to make us all feel proud on this Memorial Day. The motion to recommit merely says we want fiscal integrity to go with our responsibility in being patriots.”