mr. mcdermott, mr. rangel, as they all worked with me to make sure that we were able to be here this moment and pass agoa. mr. speaker, i rise today in support of african growth and opportunity legislation, h.r. 5986, passage of today's legislation comes as a result of strong and widespread bipartisan and bicameral support. it's been a pleasure to work alongside mr. royce in this bipartisan effort and i also want to thank my friend from the senate, senator koonce, who has been a stalwart advocate. i want to acknowledge the african diplomatic corps, thousands it is not hundreds of thousands of jobs will be saved as a result of your efforts. mr. speaker, africa is on the rise. today six of the world's fastest growing economies are in africa. opportunities abound and we see increased political stability. today's house vote on the extension of agoa's fabric provision is by all measures a success for the u.s. and africa alike. but we must not stop here. let us take a moment to acknowledge this accomplishment

mr. mcdermott: mr. speaker, the house of representatives is a wonderful body. it's one of the most amazing places in the whole world. it's where we make decisions for 300 million people. we make them for a lot of other places that we are going to influence around the world. and every once in a while you come here and think i have seen everything, and then, we got one more. here we are today, the last day of the session. with no debate whatsoever on this bill anywhere. just brought out here de novo, i guess it came from god or from the speaker's office or someplace. i don't have any idea where it came from. but it seems to me that the house of representatives is working hard to forget every positive lesson we have learned in the history of governing this country, about how to get things, big things done for the american people. today's bill sets up a process to ram through what every bill congressman levin writes in 2013. because he'll be chairman of the ways and means committee. he'll sit in a closed room using arbitrary rates with no input and no debate. it wi