Speech #1090173410

I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker. it is unfortunate that we are not focusing our attention on proposals that would actually make our Nations borders more secure. but I think we find ourselves once again on the floor of the House engaging in a kind of a political gamesmanship that forecasts an election some 48 days from now. By now many people in our country have lost their patience for political theater and expect movement toward comprehensive immigration reform. I used that phrase earlier. and it was rejected by a Member on the other side of the aisle as not being pragmatic. The House and the Senate have passed bills on immigration reform and border security a number of months ago. Under regular order we should have had conferees appointed and been engaged in the process of reconciling the two bills. As a matter of fact. the chairman of this committee and myself as ranking member would undoubtedly have been two of the conferees. However. in a substantial deviation from what is normal practice in the House. the leadership decided to launch a traveling road show of committee hearings in the States across the country in an attempt to make citizens believe that they were being active on this subject of comprehensive immigra2. Pt. 14 September 21. 2006 tion reform. But most Americans. or at least many of them. saw through the charade and the hearings were condemned in the media across the country as both a waste of taxpayers money and a waste of congressional time when we should have been focused on resolving the immigration differences that we have between the two committees. Now here we are at the end of September. The nationwide hearings are over. some 21 hearings covering more than a dozen States. and we still have no notice of when we are going to have a conference on the two measures concerning immigration that have been already passed months ago by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Now. by bringing parts of these provisions to the floor again. I dont think is going to give much encouragement to the citizens who are quickly losing confidence in the Congress.