Bill Flores: “In closing, you have heard a lot of hyperbole about my amendment. My amendment is a simple amendment, and that is to…”

“In closing, you have heard a lot of hyperbole about my amendment. My amendment is a simple amendment, and that is to stop an unconstitutional executive order that has been considered four times by Congress, including the 110th Congress and 111th Congress which were controlled by the other side. During none of those Congresses was the law that is now part of this executive order ever approved by those Congresses. This is the bureaucracy in this chart that has been created unconstitutionally by this executive order. Congress clearly doesn't intend to do that because it has studied this for four Congresses and elected not to. You also heard that there are shareholders that don't support what I propose to do in this amendment. Unfortunately, that is not true either. We have got everybody from farmers to energy to commercial fisheries to recreational fishing interests that support this amendment and are fully on the side of it. They have said that stakeholders came to Congress and said there were problems and that they wanted this executive order. That is not true, because we had a hearing in the 112th Congress and the stakeholders, I specifically asked them: Did any of you want the provisions that are included by this executive order? To an entity, they said, no, they didn't care for it. Also, I would like to say that this amendment has also passed four other times. In the 112th Congress, I added this amendment to the CJS appropriations bill for fiscal year 2013.…”