Lloyd Bentsen: “It is not inconvenient to take this bill up. I would be happy to take this bill up every day of the week for the rest of…”

“It is not inconvenient to take this bill up. I would be happy to take this bill up every day of the week for the rest of the year. What is inconvenient is the procedure with which we are taking this bill up. The procedure finds the democratic process, which is the essence of this House and this Nation, and it finds the Constitution to be inconvenient. That is what is inconvenient about this. Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the gentleman from Kansas, just wanted to have a debate about the mental health exemption. The way that the Republican majority has drafted the rule and drafted the bill, that is a moot point. There is no debate about mental health because the majority does not want to debate a health exemption. We in Texas think there ought to be a health exemption, Democrats and Republicans, and 40 States think there ought to be some form of a health exemption. But the Republican Congress, which on some days wants to devolve power from the States and other days wants to take it back, whatever is convenient, does not want to allow the debate. That is what is so dismaying about all of this.”