Rob Bishop: “This resolution provides a structured rule for the consideration of 152 individual amendments to H.R. 1540, the National…”

“This resolution provides a structured rule for the consideration of 152 individual amendments to H.R. 1540, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012. I would like my colleagues to realize that the Rules Committee received 220 amendments for consideration of this bill; and of the 220 filed, 75 percent of them, or a total of 152, are made in order. {time} 1240 Even more remarkable, the vast majority of those that were not made in order were either withdrawn by the sponsor, were duplicative of other amendments filed, were redundant restatements of provisions already included in the base bill, or violated House rules. So this is an overwhelmingly fair and generous rule, and it continues the record of the Rules Committee in this Congress of making multiple amendments in order as long as they conform to the rules of the House. One must commend Chairman Dreier for continuing this record of openness. Likewise, I wish to commend the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), as well as the ranking member, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), for bringing a bill to the floor under a continuing tradition of bipartisanship and mutual cooperation. Mr. Speaker, sometimes the Congress has a reputation of being contentious and partisan, and that reputation is, unfortunately, occasionally deserved.…”