David Thomas: “Mr. Speaker, this is a continued discussion about the way the House should be run. If you will recall in our discussions…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a continued discussion about the way the House should be run. If you will recall in our discussions yesterday and today on the rule, the last time the Democrats controlled the House, the funds for the committee total were about $223 million. Notwithstanding the more than $220 million, the resources available to the minority and the total number of staff were always an argumentative point. One of the concerns that a number of us in the minority had was Congress after Congress, when the ranking member would appear before the then-Committee on House Administration, the chairman of the committee would say: Well, I would like to give my friend on the other side of the aisle what he is asking for, but of course it cannot come out of our resources. The only way the Members of the minority would be able to get the one additional staffer which would then raise the number that the minority would have from five to six, would be to increase the committee budget so that they could pay for that staffer. What happened over a number of Congresses was that the staff on the committees grew.…”