McGovern’s Spokesman Responds to Drinking Allegations
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA)
Congressman Jim McGovern spokesman Michael Mershon said, "Our position is that Steny Hoyer said everything that needed to be said on the House floor yesterday. We will not be dignifying this issue with any further response."
According to Politico here is what went down:
One congressman accused another of drinking on the job in the midst of a tense exchange Wednesday night over whether the House would debate an amendment aimed at bringing the war in Afghanistan to a close.
“Mr. Chairman I think we’ve gotten this, that Mr. McGovern is not happy. I think this is also behavior, that I wonder if people have been out drinking tonight, or whether they are mad or angry or incapable of controlling themselves, and I would question that tonight,” Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, the chairman of the GOP’s campaign committee, said of Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) at a late-night meeting of the House Rules Committee.
“I take offense to that,” McGovern said, according to a transcript of the exchange. “I have an amendment to the rule Mr. Chairman and I would say to the gentleman that you know, there are some issues worth fighting over and for me, ending this war is one of them. And I’m sorry the gentleman doesn’t think that —- take that very seriously.”
Sessions shot back: “Simply asked a question. If the shoe fits.”
McGovern told POLITICO he had not been drinking and said Sessions called him Thursday morning. But in separate interviews, the two men differed over whether Sessions said he was sorry.
“He apologized,” McGovern said.
“I don’t know what there is to apologize about,” said Sessions, who denied that he had cast a stone at McGovern.
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
Asked whether he thought McGovern had been drinking, Sessions said “I haven’t seen the tape yet.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer spoke in defense of McGovern in a floor statement Thursday.
“I rise in deep disappointment at the treatment he was accorded last night. Unworthy of this body, unworthy of the Rules Committee and unworthy of the character and integrity of the gentleman from Massachusetts,” Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat said. “I’m pleased there has been an apology for that. But I did not want it to go unmentioned. This body is better than that, although at times it is not. And we all lament the fact when it is not.”
Tempers got hot after the committee, of which both men are members, blocked McGovern from offering a floor amendment aimed at ending the war. McGovern began forcing time-consuming roll calls on dozens of other amendments to express his frustration and that prompted Sessions’s remark.
“I understand why they were pissed off,” McGovern said.
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