Rob Bishop: “I said others were coming down here. I do not know whether that happens, so when the gentleman from Massachusetts is…”

“I said others were coming down here. I do not know whether that happens, so when the gentleman from Massachusetts is ready to close, I will be ready to close at whatever time that is. Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer the bipartisan McGovern- Jones-Smith-Paul amendment. By denying debate on this amendment, the Republican leadership has ensured that there will be no debate or challenge to sec. 1216 in the bill, a section that calls for retaining 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2015 and indefinitely beyond that. We did everything right with this amendment. We worked in a bipartisan way. We drafted it carefully. The ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee withdrew his own amendment on this issue and joined as a cosponsor of this amendment. We deserved the courtesy of a debate and a vote. It's the right thing to do. It's the decent thing to do. But more important than that, the American people deserve a full and substantive debate on the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. They deserve to know where their Member of Congress stands on this issue of critical national importance. They deserve a Congress that focuses on the issues that matter most.…”