U.S. Congressman Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, delivered the following remarks today during a Republican leadership press conference:

We just completed our second meeting of the House Republican Conference this week, and I must say House Republicans are disappointed with the lack of leadership by Democrats in Congress and this administration.  What we see is Democrats in Washington D.C. are gettin while the gettin’s good.  Getting out of town by refusing to make the hard choices necessary to protect our country with a meaningful extension of the Patriot Act or to make the hard choices to put our fiscal house in order without expanding the national debt on even a short-term basis by hundreds of billions of dollars.
 
Back in Muncie, Indiana, I can tell you, people are sitting down at kitchen tables and making the tough choices to put their fiscal house in order and look after their family as this year comes to a close.  But in Washington, D.C. we see Democrats punting on all of those issues just in a headlong rush to get out of Washington, D.C. and it’s a disappointment to millions of Americans.  And the worst extension of all by the Democrats is an extension of the failed economic policies of this administration and this Congress.  Democrats in this new stimulus bill are simply voting to extend policies that have failed to create jobs, failed to get the American economy back on its feet.
 
House Republicans know and the American people know how we can get this economy moving again and that’s fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., and fast-acting tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.  We’ll carry that message home and after the Christmas holiday break and the New Year, Republicans will return to Capitol Hill to fight to make the hard choices to put our economy and the interest of our nation first.