Unfinished Business in Congress

Floor Speech

Mr. COSTA. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow afternoon we will board our flights back to the district for the August recess. Sadly, we'll be leaving behind a lot of unfinished business.

Just yesterday, the Republican leadership pulled the catastrophe of a transportation and housing appropriations bill because it couldn't even get the votes within their own caucus.

I ask my friends, when are we going to begin to govern and work together?

When we come back from the August recess period, we will have 9 days, just 9 days left until the farm bill extension expires. But we're leaving the House without passing a true farm bill that we can conference, much less appointing any conferees to work out the differences between the two bills. The farmers, ranchers and dairymen expect better in my district.

Uncertainty swirls around the Capitol, but the only thing that seems certain here lately is that we cannot act on anything that the American people want us to that they view as no-brainers.

Take immigration reform. Over half the voters in this country think we should get this done and pass the Senate bill. Yet we are watching the summer fade into fall without even a timeline for when the House will bring up real immigration reform.

It's far too easy for us to throw up our hands and say this place is broken, but that's not why we came to Washington.

No budget, little in appropriations bills, no tax reform, little progress on immigration reform, and no farm bill.

Yet last week, the Republican leaders said that we should, instead, be measured by the laws that we repeal. Okay. Well, on that score, we've exactly repealed zero laws.

I came here to roll up my sleeves and get to work. We have real problems in this country; but we also, I think, share in real bipartisan solutions to fix those problems. All that we need is the green light.

The problem here is that the art of the political compromise has been lost. And it's about time we rediscover that art of the political compromise.

We have divided government. That's not a secret. We've had divided government in the past. And by the way, we're going to have divided government for the next 3 1/2 years.

Let's get real. It's about time that we begin to figure out ways to work together. My hope is that when we go back home we are reminded that every vote here in the House of Representatives, the people's House, is not a litmus test, and that every issue that we deal with should not be looked at in terms of black and white, but in shades of gray.

We have a lot of challenges facing America. I hope, after the August recess, we come back here in September and that we put solving America's problems before our own political agendas.

America cannot afford to continue this three-ring circus. It's about time we begin to work together, ladies and gentlemen.

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