Roy Blunt Speaks To Press After Tom DeLay Indictment

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/189092-2

HASTERT: Eric Cantor will, as deputy whip, also assume extra duties in the whip office. And David Dreier, as chairman of the Rules Committee, will help us work with the chairman and move the agenda through across the House floor and make recommendations to both Roy and myself.

I think our members were decisive, were ready to go to work and roll up our sleeves. And we will finish our agenda and get through this year with flying colors.

Roy Blunt.

BLUNT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think it's fair to say that our members today, while they've expressed great regret that Tom DeLay has had to go through what he's going through right now -- I think, largely because of his effectiveness as a leader, he became a target.

We all believe that he'll return, once this indictment is out of the way, to be the leader again. That's what our rules call for. That's why my current situation will be to act as temporary leader and Tom would come back as leader.

But he'll continue to be an important member of this House, an important part of getting our work done. He's still a member of Congress. He's going to be an effective and influential part of what we're doing as he works now to get beyond this terribly unfair thing that's happened.

Most of our discussion was about the importance of our agenda. I think many of you have been in my office. The whip's office on the third floor. And you've seen that bust that I took there from the deputy whip's office. The reason it wound up in the deputy whip's office is that nobody knew who it was.

I was particularly intrigued by a bust of a person that had been in this building since about 1815, we believe. And, since 1915, nobody's known who it was.

The very idea that, in a country as young as ours, you'd have a statue of somebody in a building and not know who they were is amazing to me, but it also expresses to me every day when I look at it -- and our members, when we look at it, when we're in my office meeting -- that what we do here is more important than who we are.

We have an agenda to move forward. We're going to have a great team effort to make that happen.

BLUNT: It's not easy to fill the gap left by our leader, Tom DeLay, who's done a tremendous job. But all of our team has got to come together, like we haven't come together ever before, I believe, to see us move forward here with responding to the hurricane, with reconciliation, reforming these mandatory programs for the first time in 10 years, looking at the other items on our agenda, from tax relief to charitable relief and moving forward with that.

That was a significant part of our discussion, both this morning and this afternoon.

The ideas are bigger than we are. And the ideas are the ideas that we're going to advance to success over the next few weeks.

I know that David Dreier is going to be a critically important part of that. The speaker and I have asked David to step in and particularly help us coordinate the activities of the chairmen and the activities on the floor and make recommendations as to how we move to the floor.

And of course, Eric Cantor, who I asked to be the chief deputy whip when I became the whip, will step up and even do more of the important work he does every day.

Our conference chairman, Deborah Pryce, will continue to provide the kind of leadership she does, so that we get our work done and the American people see that this Congress continues to work for them.

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News & Politics

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• Roy Blunt
• Tom DeLay