Government Shutdown Prevention Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I thank the gentleman for the time.

It has been fascinating. I accept that I'm a freshman, and I know it's April Fool's Day, but it's been funny hearing the discussion about how this isn't constitutional.

Now, let me see. I'll walk through this.

It's a piece of legislation with a trigger mechanism in it. Okay. I know the other side does not like that trigger, but it still would require the Senate to pass it and the President to sign it. It was fun seeing something from my childhood, from the 1970s, of how a bill becomes a law. If I remember correctly, that's still how a bill becomes a law.

The most important thing going on here is not the gamesmanship about, ``Oh, it's April Fool's Day. Let's try to demagogue this piece of legislation.'' What's important here is that the American people know we're taking the job seriously and giving the Senate another chance to step up and do their job. We're sitting here--how many weeks after we passed H.R. 1?--and we're still doing this dance. At some point, the American people have to expect us to do our job. And if we don't do our job, not a single one of us here or in the administration or in the Senate deserves a paycheck.

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