Rob Bishop: “Once again, I wish to remind the body that we are dealing with a procedural issue. We've heard a great deal of policy…”

“Once again, I wish to remind the body that we are dealing with a procedural issue. We've heard a great deal of policy debate here, but what we are dealing with is a procedural issue. The policy of the debate has been debated on this floor and will be debated in the future as well under two criteria: one, either allowing our committees to move forward with its authorization, appropriations, and reconciliation efforts, in which case certain procedural techniques must take place; or, two, actually allowing the Senate to do their work and pass a budget, going to a conference, and then moving forward in that manner. One way or the other, the procedure must go forward. This is not policy we're debating here, it's procedure. There is precedence for what we are doing. Indeed, in the last Congress, H.R. 1500, the opposition party, the minority party, also deemed resolutions and brought them forward--actually, it's happened six times in our history. The only difference between the deeming that we have here and the deeming that happened in the last session of Congress is that this particular budget--which will be debated again--actually went through a committee and had a vote on the floor. Unfortunately, when the Democrat Party did that a couple years ago, they had not gone through a committee, they did not have a debate on the floor or in committee or a vote on anything.…”