Paul Ryan: "We’re not going to take away a citizen’s due process rights."

I know Speaker Paul Ryan has gotten a lot of bad press from conservatives lately. However, this is a time we should be applauding his stance on due process which is forthright and to the point. He rightly points out the sit-in yesterday by some Democrats was nothing but a publicity stunt.





From the transcript provided by the Speaker's Office:

This Is a Publicity Stunt
“This is nothing more than a publicity stunt. That’s point number one. Point number two is this bill was already defeated in the United States Senate. Number three, we’re not going to take away a citizen’s due process rights. We’re not going to take away a citizen’s constitutional rights without due process. That was already defeated in the Senate. And this is not the way to try and bring up legislation.”

The Real Issue Here Is Terrorism
“Now, let’s focus on the issue at hand here: terrorism. And let’s find out what we need to do to prevent future terrorist attacks. And if a person is on a terror watch list, and they go try and buy a gun, we have procedures in place to deal with that. We want to make sure that those procedures are done correctly. And that is something we should be able to do in a calm and cool manner without these sort of dilatory, publicity-stunt tactics to try and bring a bill that already died over in the Senate to the House floor. That’s not any way to bring a bill to the floor.”

We Must Defend the Constitution
“They know we will not bring up a bill that takes away a person’s constitutionally guaranteed rights without their due process. We don’t agree with that, and the Senate already doesn’t agree with that. So I think, look, the point here, Wolf, is this is a publicity stunt. They’re trying to get you to ask me those questions for publicity's sake. This isn’t trying to come up with a solution to a problem. This is trying to get attention.”

The House Rules Are Clear
“Look, this is the way the rules work in the House, and they have ever since we had TV. We had a similar protest when we were in the minority in 2008. Not only did the cameras not go on, they turned the lights off on us. This is what you do when you go into recess subject to the call of the chair. These are the House rules, and they’ve been this way for years.” “This is nothing more than a publicity stunt. That’s point number one. Point number two is this bill was already defeated in the United States Senate. Number three, we’re not going to take away a citizen’s due process rights. We’re not going to take away a citizen’s constitutional rights without due process. That was already defeated in the Senate. And this is not the way to try and bring up legislation.”