[Stardust]

http://johnboehner.house.gov/



At 3:09 AM Friday, June 26, House Democrats released a 300-page amendment to Speaker Pelosi’s 1,200-page national energy tax. No one – not one single Member of Congress – read the bill that the House voted on. Speaker Pelosi promised the American people at least 24 hours to read a bill before a vote in her “New Direction for America” document distributed in 2006 that remains on her website today.

Since Democrats planned to refuse lawmakers and the American public a chance to read the bill, I decided to read portions of it on the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. By tradition, there are three Members of the House who have the right to deliver unlimited Floor remarks – the Speaker, the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader. The American people have a right to know what is being voted on and should demand to know why Speaker Pelosi was so anxious to rush this bill through Congress.

One reason could be that the 300-page, 3-am amendment was loaded with job-killing mandates, higher taxes, pet projects and special-interest provisions that will hurt middle-class families and small businesses while protecting powerful companies and politicians. These provisions should have been subject to public scrutiny and debate, and potential removal, prior to being passed by the House. Unfortunately Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership refused to allow that to happen.