Gelber response to Rubio's j'accuse

Since we posted the full text of Marco Rubio's thoughts on the shutdown, we need to do the same for Dan Gelber. From his blog:

"Friday afternoon and into early Saturday morning the Florida House came to a near standstill. Through use of a rarely deployed but constitutionally protected right, we demanded that every bill (no matter its length) be read in full on the floor of the House. For nearly 17 hours we refused to relent. Our decision was one of principle. Here is how and why it happened.

Friday morning, while the House was debating an education bill, the Republican Majority moved to end debate in order to preclude even the bringing up of an amendment authored by my colleagues Representatives Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall and Shelly Vana. The amendment was actually the substance of a bipartisan proposal that had previously passed out of the Florida Senate and that would dramatically reform Florida’s FCAT grading system. The House Republican’s motion to close down debate is an extremely hostile motion because it has the impact of stopping even the consideration of an issue or amendment. In fact, no one could even remember the last time that motion was employed by the Majority to gag discussion of an issue or amendment."

"For my caucus, the choice was clear. When you are in the minority the only thing you have is your voice. When the Majority party decides that they do not want your voice to be heard, and when they resort to procedural machinations to stop you from speaking, they are taking away the only tool you have to fight for the people you represent and the principles you cherish. If we had permitted the Republicans on this occasion (and on this issue) to just decide that they did not want us heard, than we would have acquiesced to silencing our voices. Candidly, with so many important challenges at issue – budget cuts, education reform, property insurance & taxes, and health care coverage – that was something we could not accept. We simply wanted a full and fair debate on education reform.

The response from the House leadership is that we have overreacted and that they simply were trying to control debate to allow us to go home on Friday in time for the Jewish celebration of Passover and other commitments. Let me be clear, this had absolutely nothing to do with controlling debate and at no time before or during this episode did anyone suggest that to me. First of all, our discussion of the FCAT reform amendment would have been very quick. In fact, we offered on numerous occasions to limit debate to 20 minutes. And with regard to Passover, most of the Jewish members of the Legislature are members of my caucus (including me) so we had every reason to be mindful of the clock and respectful of the rights of our colleagues to travel home to attend to private matters."

"No, their action was intended to stop us from speaking, and ours was simply and only about the right to be heard. Nothing else factored into our decision. As the Minority party, my caucus has to endure an expected level of frustration. Yes we are frustrated that only a few dozen of our bills (compared to hundreds of measures authored by Republicans) have made it to the calendar for consideration by the House. And we were probably more than a little frustrated when we watched the House Leadership in a totally unprecedented political stunt, send the House Sergeant of Arms to take into custody one of our most well-respected Democratic legislators for the sole purpose of embarrassing him. But none of these frustrations compelled us to respond as we did Friday because although there is much we are resigned to endure, losing our voice cannot be among them.

Going forward it is my hope that Speaker Rubio and his Leadership team, and my caucus, can get past the difficulties of the weekend. I respect him and have had many nice things to say about how he has comported himself as Speaker. I still do, but further recognize that all of us are capable of getting crossways with one another.

The challenges of our state have never been so great and, therefore, the need for mutual respect never more vital."