An amazing exchange just occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives as Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), outgoing chair of the appropriations committee, laid the entire fault of not having a budget at "squarely" at the feet of Bill Frist.
After Lewis finished, Rep. David Obey (D-WI), incoming chair of the Approps committee and a personal favorite, took over the lashing to add his own admonishments to his "friends in the majority."
I've been transcribing now for 20 minutes so jump over for C-SPAN's best moments of the day. Coming up: Barney Frank.
Here's Jerry Lewis, who is no doubt feeling the sting of both losing his chairmanship and any protection that might have been providing as he faces major investigations into ethical lapses during his tenure:
The breakdown of regular order this cycle, indeed the failure to get the bills done, should be squarely placed at the feet of the departing majority leader, who failed to schedule time for consideration of appropriations bills on the Senate floor.
Sen Cochran and I were convinced that moving bills individually was the only way for us to get back to regular order. Lacking that, there's a tendency for the remaining bills to become Christmas trees, for spending to grow out of control, having individual members do with the Christmas tree what they might. In our view, that is simply not acceptable.
Let me make one personal comment as an aside: My appropriations colleague, Sen. Thad Cochran of MS could not have been a better partner as we attempted to bring regular order to the appropriations process. The Sen from MS, in my judgement, was poorly served by his own leadership. I would prefer to return to Congress in January as chairman of the appropriations committee but I look forward to working with the new chairman of the committee, my friend and colleague, David Obey.
At which point, Obey takes over. Obey, if you don't know him, is one of the smartest and most-underacknowledged of our incoming chairman. As a long-time C-SPAN junkie, I know to pay attention whenever he arrives and, tonight, he did not disappoint:
Mr. Speaker, this resolution tonight is a blatant admission of adject failure by the most useless Congress in modern times. That we do not have a budget before us is certainly not the fault of the gentleman from California, the distinguished chairman of the committee. ...When these (appropriations bills) went over to the other end of the Capitol, the US Senate, they ran into the decision of the Repub majority leader to have the Senate take votes on any controversial issues in the domestic portion of the budget. As a result we are here tonight without a single dollar having been appropriated to any government program that has anything whatsoever to do with the domestic operations of this government. That is a disgraceful performance. And so we are left with the choice of passing this continuing resolution or having the government shut down. I want to contrast that with the condition that we left the government in when Dems lost the majority in 1994. In 1994, I was chairman of the appropriations committee and when we lost the election, we had still managed to complete every single appropriation before the end of the fiscal year. We did that because we had reached a bipartisan agreement between the then-majority Democrats and the then-minority Republicans on the allocation of appropriated dollars to each of the subcommittees. And it was that bipartisan cooperation that allowed us to pass every single bill in the allotted time. Now we are here with governors unable to plan, state legislatures unable to plan, mayors unable to plan, families being unable to plan, because they do not know what the final disposition of the domestic budget is going to be. And so now the Congress is going to leave town and when the Democrats take control next year, we’re going to have to pass two years of appropriations bills in one year.
Considering all that, Obey has some advice for the incoming minority:
We’ll do our best to do so but I must say, to my majority party friends, that I think that by this act of abdication, they have given up any right to criticize in any way whatever devices we have to use in order to dispose of the unfinished business of this Congress come next January. We will our best but we have very few decent options.
Obey also wants to remind everyone of what the Republican Majority Leader did have time to do:
And I find it ironic, as the gentleman from California at least obliquely referenced, that the Senate Majority Leader found time to publicly diagnose Terri Schiavo’s case from the Senate floor .... That the Majority Leader found the time to insert forty pages of language into the defense bill last year indemnifying the entire pharmaceutical industry, although the language had never been cleared by anyone in the conference and the conference had already finished its work. So he had plenty of time to do that but he didn’t manage to find the time to schedule the appropriations bills on the Senate floor
And, in case you don't understand the importance of all this, well, how about a refresher course in civics?
The most fundamental obligation of the Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, is to decide what activities the government needs to engage in and provide the financing for those activities. That’s the purpose of appropriations bills and when the Congress fails to pass that legislation, it fails in its principle obligation to the taxpayers.
Nonetheless, Obey vows to try to make it right ... with just one plea to the incoming minority:
Sen. Byrd and I expect to have an announcement next week about how we will attempt to deal with the leftovers from this congressional session. But I would only ask one thing of my friends on the majority side of the aisle: Please, spare me. Don’t have the gall to go to the American public two years from now and ask once again to be put in charge of handling the nation’s budget when the decision has been made at the highest levels of the Republican Party tonight to walk away from our collective responsibility.
Barney Frank then stepped up to the plate. Since I'm already 45 minutes behind, and who knows how long this could go on, I'll post now and give updates as warranted.
Update with a few Barney Frank tidbits. Mostly, he talked about the hardships that will be caused in housing programs. But he got off these little swipes:
I want to congratulate my colleagues on the other side for their consistency because they end this Congress governing in the same way in which they carried on for two years. Frankly, incompetently, without respect for democratic procedures, and with a willingness to inflict harm on the most vulnerable members of our society.
Why such little regard for the poorest people in this country, the most vulnerable? Why are they going to be treated this way (lack of housing security) as pawns so you can avoid having to make difficult decisions, Mr. Speaker.