Louie Gohmert: “I mean, I reviewed this bill last week. I spent a long time going line by line, only to find yesterday there's still a…”

“I mean, I reviewed this bill last week. I spent a long time going line by line, only to find yesterday there's still a new version, and today I was provided a 98-page bill. I can't tell you the pages of the issues that I am most concerned about because the version keeps changing. Now, this bill includes $330 million in authorizations. Normally, suspensions are noncontroversial, but the fact that this bill keeps changing is absolute evidence that this is not noncontroversial. It keeps changing because people can't figure out what is the best thing to do. I would submit there is a good reason for that. The bill that this seeks to renew and programs that are sought to be renewed are ones we don't have information on how successful they were, and that was the original purpose of this bill. Back when it expired in 2005, we still did not have the information on what worked and what didn't. I can tell you from my days as a judge, there was some anecdotal evidence that it looked like faith-based programs did a better job of dramatically reducing recidivism.”