Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.R. 2965, Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, Ms. Pingree from Maine, for the time and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we find ourselves back on the House floor with yet another closed rule. In fact, we haven't seen a single open rule during this entire 111th Congress. I never thought that I would see that, Madam Speaker, an entire Congress pass without a single open rule.

Just 3 hours ago, the Rules Committee was meeting on the underlying legislation before us today. This is the fifth rule since the election that will deny the minority the basic right even to a motion to recommit; in other words, one alternative piece of legislation which, when we were in the majority, we wrote into the rules that the minority would have that right. And since the election last month, this majority has brought five, with this piece of legislation, five bills to the floor with a rule denying even that right to the minority--a motion to recommit.

The underlying legislation repealing the so-called Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is important and should be considered carefully and thoroughly by all Members of this House. As a matter of fact, Madam Speaker, when I spoke on this issue on this House floor in May of this year, I said and I reiterate what I said at that time: Sexual preference should not even be a point of reference when judging individuals.

This is an important issue. Unfortunately, the congressional majority has not even held a hearing in the Armed Services Committee since the Pentagon released their findings of this recent survey. Members of the House on both sides of the aisle support our men and women in uniform. Ensuring the best equipment, improving quality of life for soldiers and their families, and doing everything we can to increase pay are issues of the utmost importance.

For 48 consecutive years, Congress has provided the necessary oversight by passing the Defense authorization bill always in a bipartisan manner. This record of effective congressional review is in jeopardy as we proceed along with what could be the final week of this Congress. I think the majority continues to give insufficient seriousness to even important issues such as this by closing the process.

The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not a policy decision to be taken lightly. The Defense Department, at the urging of Congress, spent 10 months collecting and analyzing survey responses from the men and women in our Armed Forces. I believe that analysis, nearly 15,000 pages in length, including the direct comments of our troops, should be the most important factor in considering this legislation, in considering how we vote on this legislation.

The Department of Defense released the results of their survey on November 30, just over 2 weeks ago. Now the majority is asking Congress to move forward in a manner that denies the committees of jurisdiction any review, that denies input from the membership of this House, that takes the product of the Speaker and the author of the legislation and forces the House to vote on it without any ability to offer alternatives, not even a motion to recommit.

I think we do a disservice to this body when we do not debate and deliberate with transparency. That lack of transparency has been standard procedure for the past 4 years. Obviously, we should not expect this congressional majority to change in its final weeks, but that will change in the next Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, with regard to this point of process, which I think is important, I think it is appropriate to point out the facts.

The majority is bringing this legislation to the floor by using another bill as a shell. The other bill is the Small Business Innovation Research Reauthorization bill, which has extraordinary bipartisan support. So the rule before us now strikes that legislation, which is job growth legislation--again, supported overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion in this House. It strikes that, and it inserts into that shell this legislation, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell legislation is not germane to the underlying legislation, so it is anything but regular order.

The House Armed Services Committee has absolutely no jurisdiction over that Small Business bill which the majority is using as a shell to move this legislation out of regular order in order to prohibit transparency, even a motion to recommit. The majority has demonstrated time and time again its willingness to eliminate transparency, to void regular order and to take steps totally out of regular order as it is doing again today.

So I think this is important to put on the record because this legislation, which by the way is important, as I said before, I think deserves to be
treated with respect, consideration, and the membership of this House I think deserves to be listened to, to be heard on legislation, especially legislation which evidently is important, like the one we are discussing today.

I wanted to put that on the record.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source