Mike Conaway: “for 18 months I've worked, along with my Democrat colleagues, to try to craft a bipartisan bill that we could be very…”

“for 18 months I've worked, along with my Democrat colleagues, to try to craft a bipartisan bill that we could be very proud of. Last week, it went through committee with some very hard work on both sides, both sides gave a little, got a little, and we thought left the committee with a great bipartisan bill, a bill which would have Democrats and Republicans for it, and perhaps Democrats and Republicans against it, but a bipartisan bill. We were assured on every turn there would not be a tax increase. I was a member of the bipartisan whip team on Tuesday and was told as late as noon that there would be no tax increases to pay for the $4 billion. I was misled, and that's unfortunate. All of the good bipartisan work accomplished by this committee has been squandered by, I believe, the top leadership of the Democratic Party in an attempt to strip Republican support for this bill away. We were going to have a bipartisan bill that was going to pass this floor. We're not going to have that now. I vote against this rule. It's unfortunate that the other side has seen fit to waste the good bipartisan work that we did. If we can't trust what we tell each other, you cannot work in a bipartisan manner.”