Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement after the House rejected the Democrat leadership’s attempt to suspend the rules and pass the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. Suspending the rules denies every member of the House any opportunity to amend legislation. Last week, Democrat leaders halted consideration of their original version of this bill after an overwhelming bipartisan majority accepted a Republican amendment to eliminate costly new programs and freeze funding at current levels until Congress has established a balanced budget.

“Non-stop spending has already saddled taxpayers with trillion dollar deficits and a $13 trillion national debt,” said Congressman Price. “As the next generation of Americans compete in the global economy, this debt will be an enormous obstacle. Our focus must be on reducing spending. Every attempt to create costly new programs has to be thoroughly vetted to ensure it does not worsen an already grave fiscal situation. Today, Speaker Pelosi and her allies tried to circumvent that vetting process. If regular order was good enough for this bill last week, why did they try to ram it through with little debate and no amendments this week? This is a clear failure of leadership and the latest sign of the Democrats’ inability to govern with common sense. Education in science, technology, engineering, and math certainly improve America’s competitive edge, but the bigger picture of spending and debt must also be considered.”

Note: Congressman Price’s statement on last week’s version of the legislation can be found here.