Lloyd Bentsen: “this is a particularly sad day for the House. My colleagues talked about this walk-out. The reason this man's portrait…”

“this is a particularly sad day for the House. My colleagues talked about this walk-out. The reason this man's portrait is on the wall right here is because they walked out on the British 224 years ago because they would not allow free and fair debate. Today we are not allowed free and fair debate on the floor. The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn) just spoke about his opinion. The problem is that the Republicans are going to allow debate on only one opinion, that gentleman's opinion over there. We are going to take up a bill that one man has written, that the full House is not going to get to debate, that affects 39 million Americans and we are going to hide behind a phony debate, a phony argument, of a limitation in a budget resolution that the Republican leadership violates time and again; in fact, intends to violate later this week with a waiver on a bill dealing with doctors. They violated it on defense spending. Perhaps if we added an aircraft carrier to this, we might be able to get a real debate going on this issue. They violated it for highway construction. They violated it for agriculture.”