Mike Conaway: “I thank the gentleman. This is really hard to listen to in the sense that we are being asked to simply accede to the…”

“I thank the gentleman. This is really hard to listen to in the sense that we are being asked to simply accede to the wisdom of the Senate. The wisdom of the Senate would say that long-range planning is 2 months. The wisdom of the Senate would say let's pay for 2 months' worth of these fixes by a permanent increase in mortgage insurance. That's unwise. Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to abdicate my responsibility to vote what I believe is in the best interest of the county and the best policy simply because it's Christmas. Now, we've got 2 weeks to work this out. The House has already passed an extensive bill that fixes and addresses these issues across a broad spectrum of the fixes. And to have the other side over and over say it's really the wisdom of the Senate that you should accede to, it's really the wisdom of the Senate, look what the Senate did, Mr. Speaker. It's irresponsible on every level to simply say 2 months is somehow going to fix these problems, that we can avoid dealing with the issue for another 2 months and then that's wise? I would argue that my colleagues on the other side are wrongheaded in this regard. We have a bill that fixes this for 2 years, 1 year on the unemployment and taxes. We've got the pay-fors in place. The conferees can come together and get this worked out over the next week and a half that we've got before these things go into effect and bad things happen.…”