Doc Hastings: “I wish I could have made my point, but I will finish making it here. And that is if we had had an open rule, Mr. Buyer…”

“I wish I could have made my point, but I will finish making it here. And that is if we had had an open rule, Mr. Buyer could have come to the floor and attempted to offer his amendment. Somebody would have probably raised the germaneness issue under a point of order, and I have all the confidence in the world that the Speaker would have ruled it out of order because that is what the rules are. But now, because we have established a policy here of going through structured rules, we want to give every Member in this body an opportunity to see if we should have this amendment considered that allows for disabled veterans who have businesses to be treated as others would under that section of the SBA Act. The second point I want to make in response to my friend's talking about tax relief, he talked about this majority's attempt, and I think he used the word ``attempt,'' or intention to address the AMT. I agree it needs to be addressed. There is a huge cost, as the gentleman knows; so we, in the past Congresses, have addressed it. But the tax relief issues that I was talking about in my remarks are already in place. They are already in place. They have been acted on. They were voted on, and the American people have enjoyed the tax relief.”