Van Orden Statement on Rep. Al Green’s Conduct on the House Floor

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Derrick Van Orden (WI-03) released the following statement on Representative Al Green’s (D-TX) conduct that broke House decorum during a vote to censure him over his actions during President Trump’s Joint Address to Congress earlier today:

“Both of my parents were Freedom Riders in the 1960s who went to Alabama to register African Americans to vote during the Jim Crow era. The way the Mr. Green and several of his Democratic colleagues cloaked themselves under the mantle of racial oppression was appalling and is the reason they have a 27% approval rating. Americans are not inherently racist, and we are sick and tired of being told that we are something that we are not.

“Mr. Green was rightfully censured for his incredibly poor conduct on the house floor, it was disgraceful and a direct affront of decorum. The American people did not send us to D.C. to virtue signal – they sent us here to govern. Mr. Green’s inability to comport himself as an adult on the floor is  the antithesis of what a serious legislator would do, and he must be held accountable or we will never be able to function as the body designed by our founding fathers.”