Congratulating Gerda Weissmann Klein on being selected to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1764 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart). 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 into the Record.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, House Resolution 1764 provides for the consideration of the Senate amendment to H.R. 2965. The rule makes in order a motion offered by the majority leader or his designee that the House concur in the Senate amendment to H.R. 2965 with the amendment printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying the resolution.

The rule provides 1 hour of debate on the motion, equally divided and controlled by the majority leader and the minority leader or their designees. The rule waives all points of order against any consideration of the motion except those arising under clause 10 of rule XXI. The rule provides that the Senate amendment and the motion shall be considered as read.

Madam Speaker, the time has come to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We have all heard the arguments, the studies have been done, the hearings have been held. The men and women of the armed services have spoken and their leaders have weighed in. There are no more excuses not to repeal this misguided and harmful policy. There is no more reason to delay this any longer.

Madam Speaker, for gay military personnel, how much longer do we ask them to serve in silence? How many more hearings and how much more testimony are we going to ask for before we finally hear what the men and women of the armed services have just said: Just because someone is gay doesn't make them any less of a soldier, an airman, or a marine. How many more times can we just turn our

heads and pretend we don't see the damage this policy has done to our military's readiness? And how many more competent, talented, and patriotic men and women will be kicked out of the service before this misguided and harmful policy is forever banned?

The results of the comprehensive study of the attitudes of military personnel are clear and unequivocal. It is right here.

When they were asked about the actual experience of serving in a unit with a coworker who they believed was gay or lesbian, 92 percent of the military personnel stated that the unit's ability to work together was ``very good,'' ``good,'' or ``neither good nor poor.''

When they were asked about having a servicemember in their immediate unit who said he or she was gay and how that would affect the unit's ability to work together to get the job done, 70 percent of servicemembers predicted it would have a positive, mixed, or absolutely no effect.

And it is not just the men and women who make up our Armed Forces who are urging Congress to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell; our Nation's military leaders also believe it needs to come to an end.

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, ``I would not recommend repeal of this law if I did not believe in my soul that it was the right thing to do for our military, for our Nation, and for our collective honor.''

General George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the Army, agreed. He said repeal would not keep us from ``accomplishing our worldwide missions, including combat operations.''

And Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations, said it simply: Repeal ``will not fundamentally change who we are and what we do.''

Madam Speaker, it wasn't that long ago that women were not allowed to serve in combat. When we debated ending that ban, the critics predicted that if women were allowed in combat, that discipline would dissolve and unit cohesion would crumble.

The arguments against allowing women to serve in combat were exactly the same thing they are saying today about allowing openly gay men and women to serve. But after two wars where women have served ably and bravely alongside their male counterparts, none of the grim predictions came true. Discipline has not suffered and our military remains the most powerful and effective in the world.

But those two wars have taken their toll on recruitment and retention. Our military is stretched thin, and the last thing we should be doing is kicking out skilled men and women who volunteered to fight for our country. The last thing we should be doing is telling troops that we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to train that we don't need your services anymore. And the last thing we should be doing is saying that no matter how brave you are, no matter how dedicated you are, no matter how patriotic you are, if you are gay, we don't want you to wear the uniform of the United States.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell threatens our national security. It wastes precious resources, and it goes against the values that our military embodies: integrity, honesty, and loyalty.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Tsongas).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Harman).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Berkley).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Peters).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from the other side of the aisle for his thoughts on this. He is getting ready to retire from Congress. I just want to say I've enjoyed the opportunity to serve with you on the Rules Committee and appreciate the thoughts that you bring to the issues that we have to deal with.

With all due respect, I want to disagree with you on one particular point, as I did earlier today in the Rules Committee, and without questioning anything that you had to say today, I will just say that my experience on the issue of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, whether it is in my position as sitting on the Armed Services Committee or with some of my colleagues on the Rules Committee who have questioned this particular bill as the vehicle, it is that sometimes I feel like people run out of substantive arguments and they go back to process and they say, well, there's something flawed about this process.

And over the 2 years that I've been here, as we've been discussing a piece of law that no longer works, that shouldn't be in law, that tells people who are gay or lesbian that they can no longer serve in the military, for the past 2 years I've heard over and over again, well, this is a flawed process. So as a member of the Armed Services Committee, even though my good colleague Representative Davis held subcommittee hearings on this issue and there has been much discussion of it, people said, well, we need to have a study.

So we got a study. It's a big, thick study. It's a wonderfully well done study. And when I had the opportunity just recently to sit in the Armed Services Committee and listen to the briefing by the military on the work they had done in this study, I have to say, I was very impressed. Something like 150,000 people participated in this study.

Now, as my colleagues know, when you're a Member of Congress or a challenger running, you're lucky to have a poll of 400 people to get their opinion. Maybe sometimes the poll has 1,200 people, and we take that as public opinion. But to ask 150,000 people associated with the military ``So, what do you think?'' is quite a piece of work, and I think it was extremely well done.

And what we were told that day in that briefing was, overwhelmingly, our military said, you know, this is just fine. Many of them said: I already know. I serve alongside someone who is a gay or lesbian member of the Armed Forces, and it doesn't bother us at all. It isn't interfering with unit cohesion or ability to fight. People said overwhelmingly: What is taking so long to change this particular provision in law?

So I look at this and I say, whether it's the vehicle that we have before us today--today, in some of the final days of this particular Congress; today, when I think we have to act with urgency here in this House, after this House has already passed this provision in the Armed Services, in the general authorization bill. We've already passed this once. We've already shown that we're in favor of this here. Now, it's back again as a standalone to make it easier for people to deal with this as an individual issue--to go back and say, well, it's all about the process, we haven't had enough process, I think shows great disrespect to those members of our Armed Forces and their leaders who have said to us: Change this, move on, get it done so those 13,000-plus soldiers who have already been told they can no longer serve in the military and we've lost the ability to use their expertise and their training and their patriotism in this country, to say that there isn't urgency today and that we should somehow allow a process argument to slow us down doesn't make any sense.

I very proudly come from the State of Maine, and something like 17 percent of our 1.3 million residents in Maine are either active duty personnel or veterans who have served this country. I go home and hear the people in my district, whether I'm talking to a veterans' group or someone who's just on their way to serve in Afghanistan or coming back or, sadly, sometimes at a military funeral, and people do not say to me, Prohibit gay and lesbian people from serving in the military. People say to me in my home district, in a State that is very dedicated to serving the military, they say, When are you going to end this process of discrimination?

And that is why we are here today. We are here to move forward on the

rule, to make sure that once and for all this House of Representatives, again, says let's repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Let's remember that this is a threat to our national security, that it's disrespectful of all of our soldiers, that there will be no serious ramifications of this, and, in fact, our military is very well prepared and has good plans to move forward on this transition.

Let's remember that this is the patriotic vote to cast. This is the vote for national security. This is the vote for respecting the investment we have made in these soldiers. This is a vote for increasing recruitment in our military and saying to even more members who currently are unsure, saying to more people who are unsure about whether or not they should join the military because they worry that they would possibly be out of it, it's a measure to say we welcome you.

Our Armed Services will be only stronger when we repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the previous question and on the rule.

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

The previous question was ordered.

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend, Ms. Pingree from Maine, for the time and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, we find ourselves back on the House floor with yet another closed rule. In fact, we haven't seen a single open rule during this entire 111th Congress. I never thought that I would see that, Madam Speaker, an entire Congress pass without a single open rule.

Just 3 hours ago, the Rules Committee was meeting on the underlying legislation before us today. This is the fifth rule since the election that will deny the minority the basic right even to a motion to recommit; in other words, one alternative piece of legislation which, when we were in the majority, we wrote into the rules that the minority would have that right. And since the election last month, this majority has brought five, with this piece of legislation, five bills to the floor with a rule denying even that right to the minority--a motion to recommit.

The underlying legislation repealing the so-called Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is important and should be considered carefully and thoroughly by all Members of this House. As a matter of fact, Madam Speaker, when I spoke on this issue on this House floor in May of this year, I said and I reiterate what I said at that time: Sexual preference should not even be a point of reference when judging individuals.

This is an important issue. Unfortunately, the congressional majority has not even held a hearing in the Armed Services Committee since the Pentagon released their findings of this recent survey. Members of the House on both sides of the aisle support our men and women in uniform. Ensuring the best equipment, improving quality of life for soldiers and their families, and doing everything we can to increase pay are issues of the utmost importance.

For 48 consecutive years, Congress has provided the necessary oversight by passing the Defense authorization bill always in a bipartisan manner. This record of effective congressional review is in jeopardy as we proceed along with what could be the final week of this Congress. I think the majority continues to give insufficient seriousness to even important issues such as this by closing the process.

The repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not a policy decision to be taken lightly. The Defense Department, at the urging of Congress, spent 10 months collecting and analyzing survey responses from the men and women in our Armed Forces. I believe that analysis, nearly 15,000 pages in length, including the direct comments of our troops, should be the most important factor in considering this legislation, in considering how we vote on this legislation.

The Department of Defense released the results of their survey on November 30, just over 2 weeks ago. Now the majority is asking Congress to move forward in a manner that denies the committees of jurisdiction any review, that denies input from the membership of this House, that takes the product of the Speaker and the author of the legislation and forces the House to vote on it without any ability to offer alternatives, not even a motion to recommit.

I think we do a disservice to this body when we do not debate and deliberate with transparency. That lack of transparency has been standard procedure for the past 4 years. Obviously, we should not expect this congressional majority to change in its final weeks, but that will change in the next Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to my friend from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, with regard to this point of process, which I think is important, I think it is appropriate to point out the facts.

The majority is bringing this legislation to the floor by using another bill as a shell. The other bill is the Small Business Innovation Research Reauthorization bill, which has extraordinary bipartisan support. So the rule before us now strikes that legislation, which is job growth legislation--again, supported overwhelmingly in a bipartisan fashion in this House. It strikes that, and it inserts into that shell this legislation, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The Don't Ask, Don't Tell legislation is not germane to the underlying legislation, so it is anything but regular order.

The House Armed Services Committee has absolutely no jurisdiction over that Small Business bill which the majority is using as a shell to move this legislation out of regular order in order to prohibit transparency, even a motion to recommit. The majority has demonstrated time and time again its willingness to eliminate transparency, to void regular order and to take steps totally out of regular order as it is doing again today.

So I think this is important to put on the record because this legislation, which by the way is important, as I said before, I think deserves to be

treated with respect, consideration, and the membership of this House I think deserves to be listened to, to be heard on legislation, especially legislation which evidently is important, like the one we are discussing today.

I wanted to put that on the record.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I thank my friend from Maine for her courtesy and all who have come to the floor to debate this rule, and I reiterate, I think it's an important piece of legislation. I'm sorry that it was brought forth in an unnecessarily closed manner. I think the legislation deserves more respect, and I think especially the membership of this House deserves more respect.

I have, again, gratitude for all of my colleagues, and I thank them for having participated in this debate.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlelady from Maine, and I rise today in support of the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. This resolution would ensure that the military has the ability to implement the recommendation from its recently completed study.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is the only law in the country that requires people to be dishonest or be fired if they choose to be honest. It is a law that not only is hurtful to the men and women who put themselves at risk serving in our Armed Forces, but it is a law that is hurtful to our national security.

A recent study found that 8 out of 10 Americans support repealing the law. Regardless of their political party, people recognize that on the battlefield, it doesn't matter if a soldier is gay or straight. What matters is they get the job done and protect our country.

Now, it is important to remember that we already debated and voted on this issue early this summer. We passed an amendment with the same repeal language for the defense authorization bill. At that time, there were some Members on both sides of the aisle who weren't yet ready to support this repeal. They wanted to see an extensive report by the military that was scheduled to come out December 1. It came out one day earlier.

I personally didn't feel we needed to see that report. I was already convinced this would not be a threat to military readiness and would, in fact, enhance military readiness due in part

to the fact that we have discharged over 13,000 people from our military--after taxpayer money went for their training--for reasons totally unrelated to their performance, not to mention countless others who didn't reenlist or left the military because of this policy.

But I do understand that many Members of this body from both sides of the aisle, including the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction, wanted to see that report in December. Well, the report has come out, and it is very clear with regard to the fact that--no surprise to me, but hopefully of consolation to those who were concerned--this change in policy does not represent a threat to the security of this country. And, in fact, there were several practical suggestions about how to implement this change.

In addition, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense have been very clear that they want to see this policy legislatively repealed. Why? Because repeal of this policy is inevitable. It is a question of when, not if. There are already several court orders in various stages of appeal, and the military feels that to plan for it with us in this legislative process is better for military readiness than running the greater risk of having an instant court order, an on-or-off-again court order, which is also a possibility, which would prevent the regular military planning process from going forward. The sooner we act, the better. Despite our differences, it is clear that leaving it up to the courts is the wrong way to go about it.

In 1993, the passage of Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the result of a political process, not a military one. Today, we can rectify that, remove the statutory requirement and allow the military to do the right thing to improve military readiness and enhance the protection of our country.

Let us be on the right side of history and finally move forward with repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell today.

I thank the gentlewoman.

When we get to this bill, I will address the substance of the argument that the presence of someone like me will so destabilize our brave young men and women that they will be unable to do their duty. I regard that as bigoted nonsense, but I will address that more fully then. Now I want to talk about this bizarre procedural argument that we are somehow not following regular order.

Madam Speaker, this amendment came up in regular order after the committee considered the bill and on the floor of the House, and it was adopted in a full vote on the floor of the House after a lot of debate. The Senate in committee adopted this amendment. The notion that the committees of jurisdiction have been deprived here is delusional.

What is the procedural situation?

In effect, the House, in a full debate on the floor, adopted this amendment. It went to the Senate. In the Senate, the Senate committee, by a majority, voted for this amendment and then voted the bill out, and it has been stopped twice narrowly by filibusters. It has gotten 57 and 58 votes. It has been openly debated. The notion that somehow we are the ones who are ignoring procedure when this bill gets a majority in the House after open debate on the floor, a majority in the Senate committee and is then filibustered makes no sense.

Beyond that, we are told, Well, don't hold up the big bill. Well, that's the point of this. Don't Ask, Don't Tell was originally adopted as part of the military authorization of 1993. That is the regular order we followed. Some have now said, Well, the Senate would like to be able to vote on this differently from the main bill. I will say that many of us do not think that we should adopt anything until we do the whole package, but if they want to do these two bills, that's fine. Sending this over will facilitate the Senate's procedures.

Now, there are at least five Republican Senators who previously, most of them, voted against cloture--one, Senator Collins, voted for it--who said they couldn't vote for it for various procedural reasons dealing with the tax agreement and the funding of the government. Those are on their way to being resolved.

What we do when we pass this bill today is to say to the Senate, Okay, you can do it one way or the other as long as you do both, and we give them the chance--they already had the tax issue--to have resolved the CR, and we will get a vote on the merits. What this does is to strip away any excuse that any member of the Senate--Democrat or Republican--will have for not voting on the merits. We will strip away any justification for a filibuster.

The gentleman says, Well, we didn't go through regular order. We've gone through triple regular order. A vote on the House floor is part of the consideration of the bill, as is a vote in the Senate committee and two efforts to break the filibuster.

So the question is: Do you allow a filibuster and some procedural excuses from Senators who say they're for this repeal but didn't get to vote for it? We are giving them a chance to do that. This is something many House Members have long wanted to do in addition to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell--getting the Senate to stand up and take a straight up-or-down vote. That is what we are enabling.

So I hope that the rule passes and that the bill separately passes as well.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 1743) congratulating Gerda Weissmann Klein on being selected to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Resolution 1743, a measure congratulating Gerda Weissmann Klein on being selected to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. House Resolution 1743 was introduced by our colleague, the gentleman from Arizona, Representative Harry Mitchell, on December 1, 2010. The measure enjoys the support of over 90 Members of the House.

Mr. Speaker, in 1939, Mrs. Weissmann Klein was living in Poland at the age of 15. Within months of the German invasion of Poland that year, she began to

lose her family. Her beloved older brother, Arthur, was taken away by the Germans, and the remainder of her family was forced to live in a ghetto. Later, the Nazis separated her from her parents, sending them to Auschwitz.

Weissmann Klein was forced to spend 3 years in a series of concentration and slave labor camps from 1942 to 1945. In 1945, she and the other inmates of her camp were sent on a 350-mile death march to avoid the advance of Allied forces. When the U.S. Army liberated the survivors of the march in Volary, Czechoslovakia on May 7, 1945, she was one of fewer than 120 out of 2,000 women to survive.

After the war, she married Lieutenant Kurt Klein of the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer present at the liberation at Volary. She settled with Kurt in Buffalo, New York, and had three children. She then spent decades telling her story, giving speeches, and writing books offering a message of hope drawn from her struggle for survival.

She and Kurt also got involved in a number of charity efforts. In 1998, they started the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation, a public nonprofit foundation which promoted the teaching of tolerance, respect for others, and the value of community service. Currently, she is focusing her efforts on her new foundation, Citizenship Counts, a nonprofit organization that reaches out to middle and high school students to promote the appreciation and potential of American citizenship and the democratic process.

For her life of service and promotion of tolerance and understanding among all people, President Obama announced that early next year, Gerda Weissmann Klein will be one of 15 recipients of the Nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mr. Speaker, let us now pay tribute to Mrs. Weissmann Klein and congratulate her on being selected for the Presidential Medal of Freedom through the passage of House Resolution 1743. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the sponsor of this resolution, Representative Harry Mitchell from Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I again urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.