Joe Barton: “First, let me say I rise in support of the motion to instruct. But what I really want to talk about is President Obama's…”

“First, let me say I rise in support of the motion to instruct. But what I really want to talk about is President Obama's call for bipartisanship. We heard it last night in his press conference; we have heard it in every major speech that he has given. And, somehow, it is just the Republicans' fault that we are not being bipartisan. Well, I have had it up to here with the rhetoric. The reality is totally different. We have before us a motion to go to conference in which not one Republican amendment was accepted on the House floor, in which there were no hearings in any of the committees in the House of Representatives, in which in the Energy and Commerce Committee of which I am the senior Republican we didn't have any hearings. We did have a markup. We got five Republican amendments accepted in the markup in committee, but three of those were stripped when the bill came to the floor. We are apparently going to have five House conferees out of 435 Members; we are going to have nobody from the Energy and Commerce Committee, nobody from the Education and Workforce Committee, nobody from the Ag Committee, nobody from Homeland Security, nobody from Veterans', nobody from Financial Services. The list goes on and on. That is not bipartisanship. I don't know what it is; but if President Obama is listening, if you really want to be bipartisan, pick up the phone and call the Speaker and say: allow the 41 percent of the House that represents the Republicans to be a part of the process.”