“Now, Mr. Speaker, the issue is the funding of the Federal Government. Virtually all the Democrats voted to fund the government. Virtually all of the other side, Mr. Speaker, voted not to”, said a visibly upset Rep. Moran to House members on Oct 3rd. I get the impression he wasn’t playing around either!
On October 3, 2013 Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia asked for and was given permission to address the House of Representatives for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks if necessary.
“Mr. Speaker, the public has been witness to extraordinary divisiveness between the Republicans and Democrats in this House. But I think it’s important that the public bear in mind that we have a law that was passed, passed substantially in the House and the Senate–granted, it was primarily by Democrats, of course. But it was signed by the President. And then we had a Presidential election. A major issue was the Affordable Care Act. That’s why it was called ObamaCare. And President Obama won by 5 million votes, Mr. Speaker.”
“Now, Mr. Speaker, the issue is the funding of the Federal Government. Virtually all the Democrats voted to fund the government. Virtually all of the other side, Mr. Speaker, voted not to.”
“So now, for the Republican majority to come up and try to open up different agencies, suggesting that we don’t want to do that–they’re the ones that closed them, Mr. Speaker. We’re the ones that voted to keep them open. What we want to do is to open up the government. And if we do it in bits and pieces, we create more dissension within the Federal workforce. We shouldn’t do that. The American public deserves better from us”, said Rep. Moran (source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov).
Rep. Moran is a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He also serves as the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on the Interior and Environment as well serves on the Defense and Legislative Branch Subcommittees.
Needless to say he is extremely influential, in terms of his presence and position in Congress. Its also extremely unusual to see him get upset in Congress!