Waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 876 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material in the Record.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H. Res. 876 waives a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII. That rule, as you know, requires a two-thirds vote to consider a rule on the same day it is reported from the Rules Committee. This will allow for the same-day consideration, today, of any resolution reported on or before the legislative day of December 19, 2007. It provides for the consideration or disposition of, one, a bill relating to the Children's Health Insurance Program and a bill relating to Medicare, something that at this point is moot in view of earlier proceedings today. But it also has an application on a bill relating to the alternative minimum tax; a joint resolution making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2008, the so-called CR; and the bill, H.R. 2764, making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, the so-called omnibus appropriations bill.

With passage of this rule, it allows the House to move one step closer to passing this omnibus appropriations bill that will fund the government outside of the Department of Defense. That, of course, we have already completed our work on and it has been signed into law by the President. And it will provide for funding for the entire fiscal year of 2008. It will also take us one step forward towards considering and passing a patch for the alternative minimum tax, which will affect, unnecessarily and unwisely, 23 million American families. They would be subject to paying a tax that was never intended for middle-class working families.

All of these bills, obviously, are crucially important pieces of legislation that Congress must act on before we go home, and we owe it, obviously, to the American people to get this work done.

The omnibus bill is going to reject enormous cuts that had been proposed by the President in his draft budget, cuts to essential domestic priorities such as health care, education, law enforcement, homeland security, highway infrastructure, and renewable energy programs. That omnibus bill instead does invest in crucial domestic priorities: medical research to study diseases like Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's, and diabetes; health care access, including programs like the Community Health Centers that provide more access to health care to underinsured Americans. Small rural hospitals will be helped. Special education, teacher quality grants, afterschool programs, and Head Start; Pell Grants and other student aid programs; technical training at high schools and community colleges; State and local law enforcement for communities across the country; Homeland Security grants to help fight in the war on terror. This meets the guaranteed levels for higher infrastructure and adds funding to our Nation's bridges. It also provides funding for solar energy, wind energy, biofuels and energy efficiency with a careful blend of new scientific investments and conservation efforts.

This same-day rule will take us one step closer to completing our work this year.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, we have no additional speakers on this side. I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. And I will respond and close.

A couple of things. First, let's be focused on the fact that the rule that is going to be before the House really applies to two things: consideration of the alternative minimum tax and consideration of the omnibus appropriations bill. And the rule is being brought up for same day consideration in recognition of the fact that there has been enormous work on both sides on the AMT. There is nothing new. And, in fact, the AMT bill that will be brought before the House for consideration today corresponds with the view of the minority as to that being passed without pay-fors.

And secondly, the omnibus appropriations bill is bringing before the House appropriations that had been passed in 11 separate appropriations bills but have now been consolidated as a result of the inability of our friends in the Senate to pass those bills individually as we did here in the House. So, there is nothing new that is coming up before the Members of the House. It's just the convenience of being able to act today rather than wait until tomorrow.

Secondly, my friend from Texas made some assertions about the conduct of this House in application to the rules. You know, context is everything. The reality is that virtually every piece of legislation that has been brought before the floor has received bipartisan support. Many of the items that the gentleman mentioned in the ``Six for '06'' legislative agenda, student loan cost reduction, price negotiations for prescription drugs, the restoration of the PAYGO rule, these were passed with overwhelming support on the Democratic side and substantial support on the Republican side. When they got to the other body, the Senate has been using, frankly, politics of obstruction to stop virtually anything from being considered: the filibuster, the hold. Every device available procedurally to avoid taking up a ``yes'' or ``no'' vote on a question has been employed by the Senate. And there is a sense by many on our side that the criticism that my friend from Texas is making that we have not done as much as we should in Congress, despite the fact that we in the House have passed substantial legislation helping the bottom line for American families, has been an explicit strategy on the part of the other side to use every rule, every device, every procedural opportunity basically to thwart passage of legislation. And they have the full and complete support of the President of the United States in that effort, who stands behind the whole agenda with the veto pen.

And the President appears to many of us to be operating on a one- third-plus-one approach where, as long as he can get his veto sustained, he will be able to block passage of legislation the American people need and then accuse the Congress of not getting anything done. And I think most Americans see through that.

So, Madam Speaker, with the passage of this rule, the House will move towards adjournment for this year and

have an opportunity to pass the omnibus appropriations bill and the AMT fix.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and the rule.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

I want to thank the gentleman, my friend from Vermont, for yielding. And, Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

``I rise in strong opposition to this martial law rule and in opposition to the outrageous process that continues to plague the United States House of Representatives. We have before us a martial law rule that allows the leadership to once again ignore the rules of the House and the procedures and the traditions of this House. Martial law is no way to run a democracy no matter what your ideology, no matter what your party affiliation.''

Madam Speaker, those are not my words nor are they the words of my Republican colleague from the Rules Committee, Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who spoke these same words on the floor on Monday. They are not the words of my staff or some journalist who is covering the Democrat majority heavy-handed floor tactics. No. These are the clear and clever words of the gentleman from Massachusetts, our Rules Committee colleague, Jim McGovern. He spoke these words on several occasions last year regarding what was then eloquently called ``martial law rule.''

I will also use this opportunity to point out another comment that the gentleman from Massachusetts made about martial law rules.

His quote is particularly interesting because it was given to each of us on this floor last year on December 6, just a month before the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, well after the election. He spoke about how the Democrats proposed to run the House, which today stands in sharp contrast to what they are actually doing.

About 1 year ago, the gentleman from Massachusetts said, ``Mr. Speaker, there is a better way to run this body. The truth, Mr. Speaker, is that the American people expect and deserve better. That is why the 110th Congress must be different. I believe we need to rediscover openness and fairness in the House. We must insist on full and fair debate on the issues that come before this body.''

Now, I and all of my Republican colleagues must ask, a year into the new Democrat majority, where is the openness and fairness that Mr. McGovern spoke about? Where is the openness on the energy bill rule where over 90 amendments were prevented from being considered on the House floor, including a Republican substitute? Where was that openness when we considered SCHIP reauthorization and, what, we had a closed rule?

I can help my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to find out because I know exactly where it is; they left it off on the campaign trail. This, like their promises to disclose earmarks and to run the most ethical and open Congress in history, was an empty promise. It is an empty promise which is becoming more and more evident from the opening day of this new majority, when the Democrats wrote into the rules of the House closed rules for consideration of the first six bills that we were to take up, in effect, discharging the Rules Committee from its duties and setting a new partisan tone for this Congress. Not much has changed since then, Madam Speaker.

Lacking the courage of their convictions to change what they perceived to be problems with how Republicans ran the House, the Democrat remedy for changing unfair practices in the Rules Committee was to have no Rules Committee at all. And that trend of closing down the House to Members that started back then, sadly, continues to this day.

Madam Speaker, there is a better way to run this body. The truth is is that the American people expect and deserve better. That's why the 110th Congress must be different. I believe we must and we need to rediscover openness and fairness in this House. We must insist on full and fair debate on the issues that come before this body.

Oh, by the way, following the rules of the House of at least presenting a bill 24 hours before it comes to the House floor would be a great place to start, because I know it's on the Speaker's Web site saying that that's the way we should operate. We're still waiting.

Madam Speaker, a year ago at this time, despite the House passing all but one of our spending bills, Democrats were on the campaign trail railing against Republican leadership, calling it a ``do-nothing'' Congress. Well, if last year was a failure because of Congress' ability to get all but one appropriations bill to the President for his signature on time, then what does that mean that this year we should think about Democrats when Democrats have failed to get more than one to the President after holding back popular bipartisan bills like veterans funding for their own political partisan gamesmanship?

Madam Speaker, I agree with the Democrats of 2006, not the Democrats of 2007. So, I rise in opposition to this martial law rule.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I think we've said enough. I yield back the balance of my time.