Political Quotes

“I am prepared to close, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, I have already talked about the fact that this bill did not go through regular order. It is even questionable whether the committee that heard this hearing has jurisdiction to consider this bill. I haven't even touched on the fact that the status options that are called for don't give Puerto Rico the chance to keep its current status. The status quo is totally off limits. We have also talked about dictating to a sovereign nation what is in their constitution. It also, as I said before, abrogates constitutional authority. This has never been done before. Also, there is no CBO score on this. We have zero idea how much this is going to cost. This also doesn't take into consideration PROMESA which is the financial oversight and management board that helps Puerto Rico. A big glaring issue here is citizenship. We haven't had a single hearing on how this would affect citizenship. So you are in Puerto Rico and born to two U.S. citizens, what happens to your status? Are you a U.S. citizen or not? That is not considered in this bill. So, again, this bill is half-baked. It didn't go through regular order, and it didn't go through proper committees of jurisdiction, yet here we are considering it in a lameduck session. I am incredibly disappointed by this.…”