Rule Providing for Consideration of the Fiscal Year 2015 Omnibus Appropriations bill
December 11, 2014
Madam Speaker, I thank the gentle lady from New York.
Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule that is providing for consideration of this so-called omnibus bill. Among the many troublesome eleventh-hour additions to the underlying 1,600-page spending bill is a provision that not only allows for another multibillion dollar bank bailout and for taxpayers to be on the hook for that, but it gives the keys to the bank to the moneyed special interests by allowing up to $800,000 to be contributed by one person to the Democratic and Republican Party committees.
Now, most Americans think there is already too much money in politics, but, oh, no, not House Republicans. They are just saying open up the spigots to the special interests.
Instead of passing a clean bill that funds the Federal Government and avoids another harmful shutdown, this Congress, these Republicans have chosen to bring the American people a bill that would allow for the negative opinions that they already hold of this Congress to go even further, to say the richer you are, the more access you have, the more influence that you have.
Madam Speaker, this provision has no business in a spending bill, no business in our democracy, and we can’t allow the megaphones of moneyed special interests to take hold of our government.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this rule. There are a lot of reasons to oppose it, and I am just naming one. But let’s not bail out the banks again, and let’s not give them the keys to the bank in our pocket and let the special interests take control of this Congress.
