I appreciate the gentleman from Michigan permitting me to speak on this. My friend from West Virginia made a very important point, that under this bill, if it is approved, we are going to extend the backlog to something like $72 million…

I appreciate the gentleman, and what he said is correct in terms of a situation here. Mr. Chairman, streamlining provisions in this bill provide nothing but an empty promise that projects will be built faster. The empty promise comes with…

Now, after 16 days, one remembers the gleeful Republicans pouring out of the House Chamber on the early morning of October 1 so excited that they got the shutdown, the tool they would use to end the Affordable Care Act. Well, it has now…

It is slowly dawning on some of my Republican colleagues, who were so gleeful about shutting down the government 2 weeks ago, that there will be no reward for not ruining the economy. Some think they should get a prize when they stop the…

I could not agree more with my friend from Massachusetts, who has actually spent the time getting inside this program. In fact, if the Republicans really care about hungry people in this country, these legislative efforts are a strange way…

I appreciate the gentlelady's courtesy. Mr. Speaker, one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talked about our being the ``greatest Nation in the world,'' but Republicans are running it like a banana republic. People who ran out…

But the fact is that this is an expensive entitlement in need of reform, with more areas of identified abuse than the food stamp program, which gets whacked, and we have a farm bill that is going to provide more lavish benefits for the…

I appreciate the courtesy of my friend from Wisconsin, and I am pleased to join with him on the floor this evening debating this issue. It is something we have done over the years, working with Mr. Kind, with now Senator Flake, trying to…

If we would return to regular order, if we would have honest debate on this floor about getting more value for taxpayers, we could come forth with a farm bill at a fraction of what it costs now. It would be better for farmers and ranchers…

Today is the ninth day of the Republican shutdown, what started as a tantrum against the Affordable Care Act to defund it, then morphed into a demand to delay it for a year, but now is really an open assault on our system of government…

We begin the second week of the Republican government shutdown. The proximate cause was the Republican effort to delay money that the government needs to fund the Affordable Care Act, to stop the Affordable Care Act. Well, it is also now…

Welcome to the alternative universe in the House of Representatives. We just voted, as we knew we would, to pay the furloughed workers when the shutdown ends, as we knew we would. What started as a right-wing tantrum to defund ObamaCare…