Jun

John Boehner’s Filibuster Against Cap and Trade

John Boehner, the last Republican standing?

John Boehner, using a parliamentarian maneuver, engineered a short lived filibuster of the cap and trade bill, by reading some of the 300 pages of amendments added to bill at 3 a.m.

If there’s one thing the American people should demand of their elected representatives, it’s that’s we should know what’s in bills before we vote on them. In February, the U.S. House passed a 1,100-page “stimulus” bill that was supposed to create 3.5 million jobs and keep unemployment no higher than 8 percent. Since that bill was signed into law, we’ve lost 1.6 million jobs and unemployment nationwide is now 9.4 percent. The so-called stimulus has been a disaster in Ohio where our unemployment is a record-breaking 10.8 percent.

The House late on Friday, June 26, passed Speaker Pelosi’s national energy tax – a more than 1,500 page bill that included 300 pages added to it fewer than 24 hours before the final vote. No one – not one single lawmaker – had read that entire bill before voting on it. So I did something unprecedented. I read portions of those 300 pages to the American people. By tradition, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader have the right to talk for as long as they like on the Floor. I used my prerogative as the Minority Leader to read to the American people parts of a bill that will raise their taxes, send American jobs overseas and punish hard-working, middle-class families with higher energy costs. Read more….

How does a Republic last when representatives vote on something they haven’t read? Who wrote it? Who is behind it? Obviously it wasn’t crafted by Congress.

Technorati Tags: Boehner, cap and trade