John Spratt: “the well of this House ought to be a free market of ideas. It ought to be a great national forum where we dissect…”

“the well of this House ought to be a free market of ideas. It ought to be a great national forum where we dissect legislation and debate the big issues both. And particularly today, as we take up the Defense authorization bill, with thousands of troops deployed all over the globe in harm's way, suffering casualties daily, we are spending $440 billion a year on national defense, plus the $80 billion in supplementals, over a half trillion dollars, today particularly we should have a full, vigorous, and complete debate. In the 1980s, it was this way. At the height of the Cold War, when this bill came to the floor, 100, 200 amendments were offered; and most of them, many of them were made in order. It sometimes took us 2, 3 weeks to get this bill off the floor. We had a full, free, and open debate. Today the debate will be circumscribed, carefully controlled to bar the issues that our Republican colleagues want to avoid or fear losing if the House were allowed to weigh the issues and work its will. This is not the way this institution should treat something so important. In addition, in years past, when we ran the House, there was something called comity. And senior members of the committee in particular were allowed to have the deference at least of a few amendments that would be offered on the House floor. Their experience was valued. Today, the gentleman from Missouri's (Mr. Skelton) amendment, shut out.…”