Lloyd Bentsen: “Mr. Speaker, after the highway bill that busts the budget and all the pork projects in it, and the fact that we debated…”

“Mr. Speaker, after the highway bill that busts the budget and all the pork projects in it, and the fact that we debated the Republican budget resolution at 12:30 in the morning because they did not want to debate it in the light of day, I did not think the fiasco of the House Republican leadership could be topped until this "special order" piece of legislation was brought to the floor. Mr. Speaker, this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. We are going to throw out the Tax Code, tell American business that they are not going to know how to invest, not going to know what to issue debt to, issue stock, not going to be able to know what to do because maybe we will do a new Tax Code by 2002. The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) says that the bill says, "Congress should." There is a difference between "should" and "shall." The fact is that if we want to do tax reform, we should get the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Archer), the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, my good friend and colleague from Texas, to mark up a bill and bring it to the floor. Let us debate it now. Bring the American people in on the deal. All this does is set up the Congress for failure and set up American business for failure.”