Charles W. Stenholm: “I rise to support the rule. As we have heard, it is essentially a fair rule; and I am grateful to my chairman, the…”

“I rise to support the rule. As we have heard, it is essentially a fair rule; and I am grateful to my chairman, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Combest), for requesting such a fair rule. I hope the entire House appreciates the fairness of the action of the request of the House Committee on Agriculture. This rule restores a tradition of full and fair debate that always used to take place when farm bills came to the floor. While I feel the committee bill is a reasonable consensus product, I know that many of my colleagues believe it can be improved, and I very much look forward to the discussion before us. As a participant in its development, I believe that our debate will provide an excellent opportunity for all of our colleagues and for the American people to see the wisdom of the committee's work. The open rule has become too rare in the debates we have had in the House in recent years. In the Committee on Agriculture we never considered having this bill considered on the floor in a restrictive way. Anticipating an open rule, we knew that every decision we made, every effort designed to set budgetary priorities would be subject to the full scrutiny of every Member of the House. I fully believe that anticipation of an open floor debate helped us to build a better bill in committee. As a result, it has the support of a broad diversity of interests.”