(Mr. Barton of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. Barton of Texas: Mr. Speaker, I have only been in the House for 23 years, so I guess I am still in some ways still a novice, but I have never seen anything like last night. When you look up on that board over there and over there, it says "215-213 final," that's it. In the 23 years I have been in the House, I have never seen a vote that said "final" and been gaveled reopened until last night.
I mean, how important is it that you win a motion to recommit? My gosh, all you do is take it back to committee, report it back out, muscle your troops in line, and pass the bill as you want it.
Now I know there are men and women of integrity on the Democratic side of the aisle, because last week the dean of the House, John Dingell of Michigan, in the Energy and Commerce Committee, when I as a ranking member used a procedural rule to force the reading of bill, he read the bill. It is not what he wanted to do, but it is what the rules allowed and required.
The strength of a democracy is how you treat the minority, and the minority's strength is in using the rules. When we are smart enough to use the rules and win, we ought to let it count.
