Faithful Execution of the Law Act of 2014

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Nugent), my good friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, somehow, against all odds, the Republican leadership of this House keeps coming up with new and creative ways to waste everybody's time. This is getting to be embarrassing, quite frankly.

Last night in the Rules Committee, I joked that I picked the short straw, so I am handling the rule today. The reason why I said that is because what we are doing today really is a joke.

This is not serious legislating. Even if there was some substance to the concerns the gentleman raised, the bills that have been written are written in such a way that they are purely political.

This is not about serious legislating, this is about political statements, this is about political press releases, and I think the American people, quite frankly, have had enough.

The Congressional Research Service says that it costs $24 million a week to run this place. I am going to tell you that what we are doing right now is wasting taxpayers' dollars.

With all that needs to be done--with all that needs to be done, this is another politically motivated week of let's go after the President. That is the way it has been since this President has been elected, and I think people are getting tired of it.

Week after week, month after month, and year after year now, this Republican majority continues to bring bills to the floor that have no chance of passing the Senate and have no chance of being signed into law that are just, again, political press releases.

What is worse, the bills that are being brought forward do nothing-- absolutely nothing--to help rebuild our economy or put people back to work. My friend, the gentleman from Florida, talks about our responsibility as Members of Congress.

Well, our responsibility as Members of Congress is to help people, is to legislate, is to deliberate, is to debate serious issues passionately. That is what we are here to do, not this. This belongs in the Republican National Committee. This is a press conference that my friend should have outside of this great building, quite frankly.

Mr. Speaker, this economy is slowly recovering, but Republicans insist on doing nothing to actually strengthen that recovery. They refuse to consider any meaningful jobs legislation. We should have a highway bill to put millions of people back to work.

Putting millions of people back to work with the increased revenue and taxes, you could actually pay down the deficit and the debt, but they don't bring anything like that to the floor. They block every attempt to increase wages for workers.

We need to raise the minimum wage in this country. It is unacceptably low. People who work full-time ought not to live in poverty; yet we can't even get a minimum wage bill scheduled on the floor of the people's House. They won't even talk about it. We can't get them to even allow us to have an amendment on the minimum wage.

They continue to ignore the plight of the long-term unemployed in this country. Over 1.7 million Americans are unemployed. These are people who are looking for jobs and still can't find them. The answer to them from this Republican Congress is you are on your own.

I wonder sometimes whether any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have ever met somebody who is unemployed or have talked to anybody who have lost their long-term unemployment benefits.

Their answer is go ask daddy for a loan or go sell some stocks, that will take care of it. They have no idea what people in this country are going through; they have no idea how hard it is to struggle in poverty.

Somehow, they find the time to take 51 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, 51 votes. Now, I get it, you don't like it, so you vote to repeal it once; you can vote to repeal it twice, maybe five times, okay. But 51 times that we have wasted the taxpayers' money debating a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, it is ludicrous. It is unreal. People don't understand this behavior outside of the beltway.

Mr. Speaker, they also, quite frankly, find time to waste millions of tax dollars defending an antigay marriage law that is plainly discriminatory. That is okay for them to use taxpayer dollars to do that to stop any kind of reversal of this discriminatory law.

Today's entry in the sweepstakes of useless legislation is the so- called Imperial Presidency of Barack Obama. Never mind the fact that President Obama is using the same kinds of executive authority that President Bush and others before him used.

Let me repeat that. President Obama is using the same kind of executive authority that President Bush and other presidents before him have used.

Never mind the fact that the people supporting this legislation were more than happy to let George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ignore and contravene Congress at every single opportunity.

In fact, they defended what I think is some really questionable behavior of the Bush/Cheney team, and never mind the fact that the last people on Earth who should be complaining about imperialism continue to vote for closed rules, continue to ignore regular order, and continue to shut Democrats out from the legislative process.

By the way, one of the bills that we are debating today was introduced the day before it was marked had no hearings--so much for the promise that Speaker Boehner made that we are going to go back to regular order--no hearings, introduced the day before, then going right to America.

Let's be honest, even if President Obama did everything in the world that the Republicans say they are asking him to do, they would still find a reason to complain. My friends on the other side of the aisle, you guys just don't like the President; I get it.

But do you know what? Get over it because, at this point in time, our job is to work with the Senate and with the President to move this country forward; instead, my Republican friends have spent every single second since this President was elected trying to obstruct every single initiative that he has put forward. Even when he puts forward initiatives that they originally proposed, they complain.

The bills that the Republicans bring before us today are likely unconstitutional, violate the separation of powers, would result in scores and scores of

frivolous lawsuits, and would be costly and impractical to apply.

They don't deserve to be on this floor, and they certainly do not deserve to pass. When you read the way they were drafted, as I said before, they are written in a very political partisan way.

Mr. Speaker, I consider myself an institutionalist. I love the House of Representatives. I am proud to serve here. It is a privilege to serve here. Our Founders created the Congress as a coequal branch of government, and this institution should never be overlooked or sidestepped.

There is a strong argument to be made that, over the past 30 years, Congress has allowed itself to become so bogged down in gridlock that it has allowed executive power to grow far too large. That is a worthy debate for us to have.

Now, that being said, the executive branch has the authority to make certain regulations and take certain executive actions, and this President--any President--has a responsibility to lead when Congress can't get its act together and do its job.

We are elected to legislate, but time after time, instead of tackling issues like immigration reform, climate change, jobs, the minimum wage, bringing our troops home safely from Afghanistan, feeding our hungry-- we have 50 million people in the richest country in the history of the world that are hungry; we all should be ashamed of that--but instead of dealing with that or issues like ending poverty or rebuilding our infrastructure or helping the long-term unemployed, this Republican majority chooses instead to bring up partisan messaging bills that will justifiably die.

Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve so much better than this. We are wasting time; we are wasting taxpayer dollars doing this kind of stuff. They deserve a Congress that tries to improve the lives of every American, instead of placating an extreme right wing.

They deserve a Congress that actually does its job. I will say to my friends: this is not doing our job. The bills before us today go exactly in the opposite direction of what we should be doing.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule and defeat the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would urge my colleagues to remember the words ``physician heal thyself.'' While my friends are complaining about the President of the United States, they should kind of look inward and look at the imperial Republican majority that has kind of taken over here in this House of Representatives.

We had the chairman of the Oversight Committee literally stop a member of the Democratic Party from engaging in legitimate and appropriate debate. In fact, he shut off the microphone and ended the hearing. I mean, is that what our Founding Fathers had envisioned for this Congress? Is that what upholding the Constitution is all about?

As someone who serves on the Rules Committee and who welcomed the statement by Speaker Boehner that we would return to regular order, I am still looking for it. We just saw the most closed session in the history of this Congress last year. We had the most closed rules in a single year, the most closed rules in a single week, the most closed rules in a single day. I mean, the Rules Committee I love to serve on because of the great history. My former boss Joe Moakley was the chairman of the Rules Committee. I have great admiration for my colleagues on the Rules Committee, but the Rules Committee is becoming the place where democracy goes to die. Serious issues are routinely cut out.

We had a Republican Member yesterday, Mr. Gibson of New York, who had a great idea about trying to hold the Executive accountable when it comes to the War Powers Act. It is an important issue. That is actually a legitimate issue for us to discuss. It was perfectly germane. On a party line vote, the Rules Committee voted that down. They said we won't have that debate here on the House floor.

The way this place is supposed to operate is that all of us--all 435 of us--whether we are Republicans or Democrats, ought to be considered important, and we all represent the same number of constituents. I understand that the party in control gets to kind of control the agenda, but that doesn't

mean the party not in control gets shut out on a regular basis on very important issues. Yet that has become the pattern here. Not only that, but we have seen more and more instances where committees of jurisdiction are not even relevant anymore--where bills are introduced the day before there is a markup, where there are no hearings. Sometimes we have bills that just mysteriously appear in the Rules Committee.

My colleagues know that I have great difficulty with their approach to dealing with the SNAP program, formerly known as ``food stamps.'' They proposed a $40 billion cut on the poorest of the poor to pay for subsidies for rich agribusinesses. I thought it was a bad thing to do. I am also on the Agriculture Committee. That bill never even went to the Agriculture Committee. We never had a hearing on it. We never had a markup on it. It mysteriously appeared in the Rules Committee, and then it came to the floor.

This is the way this place is being run. So, when you talk about ``imperial'' anything, look in the mirror. We need to change the way we do business here. This place would operate a lot better if you would let the people's House work its will. If you brought the Senate-passed immigration reform bill to this floor, it would pass, but it is being blocked because a small group within the Republican caucus doesn't want to deal with the issue of immigration reform. Important issues are routinely being denied consideration on this floor. This is a place where trivial issues get debated passionately and where important ones not at all, and people are getting fed up with it.

This politically motivated piece of legislation is politically motivated because of Minority Leader Cantor's memo to, I guess, Republicans after their retreat. They talked about having an Imperial Presidency week to kind of embarrass the President. I guess that is what they call serious legislating, but this really is a joke. I urge my colleagues to vote all of this stuff down.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

It is funny. Again, I love that this all of a sudden has become an issue for my colleagues.

There is a Washington Post article from July 24, 2006. Let me read the first couple of paragraphs:

A panel of legal scholars and lawyers assembled by the

American Bar Association is sharply criticizing the use of

``signing statements'' by President Bush that assert his

right to ignore or not enforce laws passed by Congress.

In a report to be issued today, the ABA task force said

that Bush has lodged more challenges to provisions of laws

than all previous Presidents combined.

The panel members described the development as a serious

threat to the Constitution's system of checks and balances,

and they urged Congress to pass legislation permitting court

review of such statements.

I can go on and on and on. The point is ``silence'' on the other side during all of that time. Then they said: Well, now we have got religion on this issue, and we want to hold everybody accountable. Yet, when Mr. Gibson had his amendment yesterday to actually bring up a legitimate focus where, I think, the Executive over the years has kind of abused its powers--and that is on the War Powers Act--he brought a germane amendment to the floor, and that was ruled out of order--we will deal with it another time--the translation of which means in this imperial Congress that it will never see the light of day.

This House is being run in the most imperial way, where anybody who has a different view is routinely shut out from debate, with more closed rules than any Congress in history. I think it is probably more avoiding regular order--never mind the closed rules--than any Congress in history. That is one of the reasons some of the stuff we bring to the floor here is so contentious. It is because it is written in such a flawed way.

I think it is a legitimate topic of discussion to talk about the appropriate powers of the Executive and the appropriate powers of the legislature, but to do that, I think, in a serious way means doing it in a bipartisan way, and there are ways for both Republicans and Democrats to come together. Again, this has never been about a serious attempt to deal with that issue. I mean this was one of their political talking points at their convention, at their retreat, that my friends had. This is not a serious attempt at anything. This is a political press release. We taxpayers spend $24 million a week to keep this place in session here, and this is how my friends use the taxpayers' money-- to deal with these kinds of things?

The gentlelady from Alabama talked about her constituents all talking about this issue. Boy, I have got to tell you that, where I am from, what people talk about is: When are you going to pass a highway bill? They want to know when we are going to deal with the issue of jobs. My constituents and the people I meet all over the country want to know what we are going to do about raising the minimum wage. How are we going to deal with a pay equity bill so that women don't get discriminated against and get paid less than men do for doing the same job? They talk about global warming, which is like the worst thing you could talk about here because my friends don't even admit that it exists. They want to know what we are going to do to protect our planet and what we are going to do to help the long-term unemployed.

Those are real issues. Those are about helping people. This is politics, and I think people have had enough of it. So I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to say ``no'' to this stuff.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, just to make sure the record is correct, what I am understanding from staff is that while there were some hearings on the subject, one of the bills had no hearings. So, again, under regular order I think it would be important that the actual bill have a hearing.

The other thing, my colleague from Florida said that he would like a more open process. Let me make a suggestion: then vote for one. Because consistently in the Rules Committee, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle routinely vote for closed rules. They routinely vote against allowing amendments, including germane amendments, to be made in order, including what I think would be an amendment that has bipartisan support, the one by Mr. Gibson on the War Powers Act that could have brought us together. That is a legitimate subject.

The reason why this legislation before us is such a waste of time is because it does not reflect deliberative process. It does not reflect any kind of bipartisan cooperation. It is a political press release. It is a waste of taxpayers' money.

I will say to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I, too, took a pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution, and part of that pledge is to make sure that I represent all of the people, not just some of the people, not just those who give big contributions to political parties, but all of the people.

The fact that we have nearly 2 million people in this country who are cut off from unemployment benefits, what does anybody say to them when you meet people who come up and say that they are looking for a job and they can't find one? Maybe my friends don't talk to those people.

I will tell you it is heartbreaking that this Congress, the people's Congress that is supposed to represent them too, has turned their backs on them. What do you say to people who get cut off of their food benefits, who see their food benefit getting slashed, who end up at food banks trying to make ends meet to put food on the table for their families.

We sit here and debate this, a partisan bill, and we don't do anything about that?

Or, increasing the minimum wage--if you want to help people get off of food stamps, increase the minimum wage. Millions of people would automatically get off of public assistance. We can't even get a vote on that. We are not even allowed to bring that to floor.

People are asking me, When are you going to pass comprehensive immigration reform? The Senate passed it in a bipartisan way. Why can't you bring it on the floor of the House? The answer is because the imperial Republican majority in this House has declared that no, we are not going to even talk about it, and the Rules Committee, again, has been used as a place to shut off democracy and to not have these kinds of important issues brought to the floor.

So here we are debating a partisan bill that is purely partisan. You couldn't write it more partisan if my friends tried. Here we are debating this kind of bill while so many other things need to be addressed. This is a waste of time. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars. It diminishes this institution.

We are better than this. We should be talking about putting people back to work. We should be talking about helping to improve this economy at a more rapid pace. We should be talking about making sure that no one falls through the cracks; that we extend unemployment insurance benefits to people who need it.

We should be talking about those issues. We should be talking about global warming. Instead, we are doing this. Again, written in a very partisan way, which I regret very much.

Again, I urge my colleagues to reject this and reject the rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The gentleman says that this has nothing to do with President Obama. The committee report only cites President Obama, in terms of this issue, and their political document, the memorandum that came from Eric Cantor to the House Republicans, talks about the Imperial Presidency, and says President Obama has provided new clarity of what constitutes an Imperial Presidency. President Obama, President Obama, and on and on.

It just defies logic for anybody to think for one second that this isn't about trying to attack this President of the United States, because what we have seen time and time again from the time this President was elected has been nothing but obstructionism and attack, obstructionism and attack, obstructionism and attack. I get it. There are differences in philosophies between the two parties.

What is troubling to me is that in this imperial Republican Congress President Obama's ideas don't even get a chance to have their day on the floor, where we are routinely shut out.

In this imperial Republican Congress we cannot bring to the floor a bill to increase the minimum wage. We cannot bring to the floor a bill to extend unemployment benefits for those over 2 million long-term employed. We cannot bring to the floor a jobs bill. We cannot bring to the floor the bipartisan Senate-passed comprehensive immigration reform bill, which would do the right thing on behalf of a number of immigrants in this country, but would also, by the way, we are told, reduce our deficit.

We can't even bring those things to the floor for debate. Under this imperial Republican leadership, our hands are tried. So we try procedural motions. We are trying discharge petitions. We are trying whatever we can to try to be heard.

I think it is important for the American people to know where people stand. So if my friends on the other side of the aisle don't believe the American people deserve a raise, if they don't believe we should increase the minimum wage, vote against it. Go on record. Let the American people see where you stand. On immigration reform, if you don't want to reform the immigration system, fine. Vote against it when it comes to the floor.

When my friends on the other side of the aisle routinely and regularly deny us the opportunity to even consider these things, that hurts our democracy. It diminishes this institution.

If you want to talk about imperialism, what is that?

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am urging my colleagues to defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 4209, Mr. John Tierney's bill that contains the historic bipartisan, bicameral agreement on a permanent fix to the sustainable growth rate of Medicare, which will ensure fairness to doctors and strengthen Medicare.

My colleagues on both sides of the aisle have heard from the medical community on this issue. My Republican friends, unfortunately, have proposed a ``poison pill'' amendment that would kill this bipartisan agreement with an offset attacking the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Tierney's bill instead includes a commonsense pay-for that finances the bipartisan doc fix by putting limits on our spending on wars overseas. We already have these sorts of caps on spending for almost everything else in the budget, and it is time we capped our war spending as well.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

This amendment simply caps the OCO. We give the administration 1 more year of the Overseas Contingency Operations spending without any contingencies, but beginning in 2016, OCO is subject to budget caps just like everything else.

Funding the war in Afghanistan is not emergency spending. We have been there for over a decade. We all know what the costs entail. The OCO is a so-called emergency account to keep the war in Afghanistan funded.

I don't know about you, Mr. Speaker, but the fact that we have troops in Afghanistan is no longer a surprise and is no longer an unexpected development.

In addition, the OCO has become a slush fund for Congress and the Pentagon to stick in goodies for procurement and operations and maintenance that it couldn't find room for in the Pentagon's half- trillion dollar base budget.

Now that Afghanistan President Karzai has made it perfectly clear that he doesn't want the United States or its military in Afghanistan, we should, at a minimum, cap the OCO and bring our troops home now.

So if we can find billions and billions of dollars to fund a war that nobody wants in a country where the government insults our troops every single day, then we can use those moneys to fund real needs right at home, like permanently fixing the SGR once and for all.

We talk about trying to find common ground. I think there is a lot of common ground on this issue amongst Democrats and Republicans. I think there are a lot of Republicans who are just as sick of this endless war and this over-the-top, unaccounted for spending in these wars as Democrats are.

So I think this is a sensible offset, and I would urge my colleagues to support our initiative.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and to defeat the previous question, and vote ``no'' on the underlying bills for all the reasons I said before. We should be using the taxpayer dollars to do things to help people on this House floor, not to advance political agendas.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 4138.

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

Mr. Chairman, our system of government is a tripartite one, with each branch having certain defined functions delegated to it by the Constitution. The President is charged with executing the laws, the Congress with writing the laws, and the judiciary with interpreting them.

The Obama administration, however, has ignored the Constitution's carefully balanced separation of powers and unilaterally granted itself the extraconstitutional authority to amend the laws and to waive or suspend their enforcement. This raw assertion of authority goes well beyond the executive power granted to the President and specifically violates the Constitution's command that the President is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Mr. Chairman, from ObamaCare to welfare and education reform to our Nation's drug enforcement laws and other areas of the law, President Obama has been picking and choosing which laws to enforce. In place of the checks and balances established by the Constitution, President Obama has proclaimed that ``I refuse to take 'no' for an answer'' and that ``where Congress won't act, I will.''

Throughout the Obama Presidency, we have seen a pattern: President Obama circumvents Congress when he doesn't get his way, but the Constitution does not confer upon the President the executive authority to disregard the separation of powers and rewrite acts of Congress based on his policy preferences. It is a bedrock principle of constitutional law that the President must faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress.

We cannot continue to allow the President to ignore the constitutional limits on executive power. The President's far-reaching claims of executive power, if left unchecked, will vest this and future Presidents with broad domestic policy authority that the Constitution does not grant.

As prominent law professor, Jonathan Turley, who testified that he voted for President Obama, warned in testimony before the Judiciary Committee:

The problem with what the President is doing is that he is

not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He

is becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to

avoid, that is, the concentration of power in a single

branch.

That is why I join with Representative Gowdy and Chairman Issa to introduce H.R. 4138, the ENFORCE the Law Act. This legislation puts a procedure in place to permit the House or the Senate to authorize lawsuits against the executive branch for failure to faithfully execute the laws.

The courts have held that lawsuits alleging institutional injuries must be brought by the injured institution itself, and H.R. 4138 is solidly in line with those judicial precedents. In addition, because it is an act of Congress, the ENFORCE the Law Act can apply special court procedural rules to significantly increase the speed at which cases challenging the President's failure to faithfully execute are considered by the courts. These provisions are critical to ensure the President cannot simply stall a lawsuit until his term is up.

In addition, these provisions are similar to those that were in the Line Item Veto Act. Litigation challenging the constitutionality of the line item veto proceeded through the district court and was decided by the Supreme Court within 7 months of being filed.

The ENFORCE the Law Act will help overcome the hostility the courts have shown toward deciding disputes between the political branches in the past.

The Constitution's Framers did not expect the judiciary to sit on the sidelines and watch as one branch aggrandized its own powers and exceeded the authority granted to it by the Constitution; rather, the Constitution gives the Federal courts very broad jurisdiction to hear ``all cases . . . arising under this Constitution and the laws of the United States.'' However, over time, the courts have read their own powers much more narrowly, refusing to exercise a vital check over unconstitutional action by the executive branch.

When the courts refuse to step in and umpire these disputes, they cede the field to this and future Presidents. The separation of powers is not strengthened by the refusal of the judicial branch to referee the division of power between the branches.

As then-Senator Obama observed in 2008:

One of the most important jobs of the Supreme Court is to

guard against the encroachment of the executive branch on the

power of other branches. And I think the Chief Justice has

been a little bit too willing and eager to give an

administration, whether its mine or George Bush's, more power

than I think the Constitution originally intended.

The ENFORCE the Law Act will help ensure that, when Congress brings a lawsuit against the administration for its refusal to enforce the laws, the courts take up the cases and decide it expeditiously.

This legislation is a good first step toward ending this crisis and restoring balance to our system of government.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my distinct pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Gowdy), a member of the Judiciary Committee and the chief sponsor of the legislation.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Gerlach), another chief cosponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the majority leader.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to point out that this legislation does two things: one, it expedites any court consideration of lawsuits brought under this legislation; two, it recognizes the distinction between constitutional standing and other standing that has been court created.

It says that that standing can be waived. That does not in any way determine what a court's ruling might be

or even what its ruling would be on the standing of a particular lawsuit brought, but it strengthens the hand of the Congress--any Congress--and under the control of any leadership to determine whether or not to bring lawsuits.

At this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), a leader of the House and a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller), the chairman of the House Administration Committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to remind those here that during the time that the other party was in the majority, they sued the Bush administration to enforce a subpoena related to Harriet Miers. All we are trying to do is that, when you do that, we make it very clear that there will be an expedited process.

We have sued to get documents for the Fast and Furious matter. That is more than 4 years old.

So we are only trying to make this process of holding up the powers of the House work better.

At this time I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

I want to respond to my good friend and the ranking member of the committee, Mr. Conyers, regarding his comment about lawsuits brought with regard to a subpoena when the Democrats were in the majority.

I also want to point out, and I will ask at the appropriate time that the first page, since it is voluminous, and only the first page of each of four lawsuits that were brought by the gentleman from Michigan against three separate Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan, George W. Bush, and interestingly, Barack Obama, be inserted into the Record.

I would only point out that this legislation simply--when there is consensus, as there was not in those cases because only a few other Members joined the gentleman, but when there is consensus in an entire body, the House or the Senate votes to bring a lawsuit, that this would do two things.

It would expedite that process, so we don't have it drag on for years and years like the Fast and Furious case has been dragging on, and it would also make sure that only the standing issues that are in the United States Constitution would be a bar to bringing the lawsuit, and not court-administered, court-created standing issues.

So I urge my colleagues again to support the legislation.

[From LexisNexis]

John Conyers, Member, United States House of Representatives, et al., Appellants v. RONALD WILSON REAGAN, individually, and as President of

the United States, et al.

No. 84-5171

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

765 F.2d 1124; 246 U.S. App. D.C. 371; 1985 U.S. App. Lexis 30754

January 18, 1985, Argued

June 28, 1985

Prior History: [**1] Appeal from the United States District

Court for the District of Columbia (D. C. Civil Action No.

83-3430)

Counsel: Margaret A. Burnham, a member of the bar of the

Supreme Court of Massachusetts, pro hac vice, by special

leave of court, with whom Michael D. Ratner, Frank E. Deale,

John W. Garland, and William Genego, were on the brief, for

Appellants.

John M. Rogers, Attorney, Department of Justice, with whom,

Richard K. Willard, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Joseph

E. DiGenova, United States Attorney, and Leonard Schaitman,

Attorney, Department of Justice, were on the brief, for

Appellees.

Theodore M. Lieverman, Ira J. Katz, and Alan Dranitzke,

were on the brief for Amici Curiae National Lawyers Guild, et

al., urging reversal.

Daniel J. Popco and Paul D. Kamenar, were on the brief for

Amici Curiae U.S. Senators Strom Thurmond, et al., urging

affirmance.

Judges: Tamm, Wald, and Bork, Circuit Judges. Opinion for

the court filed by Circuit Judge Tamm.

Opinion by: Tamm.

Opinion: [*1125] Tamm, Circuit Judge:

This is an appeal from the dismissal, 578 F. Supp. 324, of

a suit brought by eleven members of the United States House

of Representatives challenging [**2] as unconstitutional the

military invasion of Grenada in October of 1983. Because the

actions complained of have long since ended, we dismiss the

appeal as moot.

I. Background

A. The Invasion of Grenada

On October 25, 1983, United States military forces invaded

the island nation of Grenada. At the time of the invasion,

the political situation in Grenada was unstable: Prime

Minister Maurice Bishop and other government officials had

been assassinated on October 19, political power had been

seized by a newly established Revolutionary Military Council

under the leadership of Army Commander General Hudson Austin,

and a 24-hour curfew had been declared. President Reagan

stated that he [*1126] ordered the invasion to protect

innocent lives, including approximately 1,000 Americans

living in Grenada, to prevent further chaos and to assist in

restoring law and order and government institutions to

Grenada.

Mr. Chairman, at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Hurt).

Mr. Chairman, we have only one closing speaker remaining, so if the gentleman is prepared to close, we will close right after.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

This House has passed close to 200 bills that are piled up in the United States Senate that create jobs, that promote domestic energy production, that reform our out-of-control Federal regulatory process in this country, but it is also well worth taking our time to protect this institution's prerogatives and the people.

Here in the people's House, we represent the interests of the people of this country, and to uphold the powers, the article I powers of the House, is vitally important.

The Constitution provides that ``all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.''

Yet, the current administration has unilaterally sought to rewrite the law, not by working with the people's elected representatives, but through:

blog posts like this one, which removes penalties for employers who would otherwise be required to provide insurance coverage for their employees;

regulatory ``fact sheets'' like this one, which creates an entirely new category of businesses and exempts them from their responsibility under the law;

letters such as this one, which acknowledges that people are having their health insurance terminated under ObamaCare, in violation of the President's promise that ``if you like your health care plan, you can keep it,'' and then claims to suspend the law's insurance requirement to a date uncertain.

This one letter alone suspends the application of eight key provisions of ObamaCare, namely, those requiring fair health insurance premiums, guaranteeing the availability of coverage, guaranteeing renewable coverage, prohibiting exclusions for preexisting conditions, prohibiting discrimination based on health status and others.

Why is this being done?

To delay the terrible consequences of ObamaCare until after the next election. As this headline from The Hill newspaper announced just last week: ``New ObamaCare delay to help midterm Dems: Move will avoid cancelation wave before Election Day.''

These actions are not supported by the United States Constitution. It is time for Congress and the judiciary to act. This bill would empower the Congress and the judiciary to remind the President that ours is a system of government consisting of three separate, coequal branches, not one-branch control of our government.

Support the ENFORCE the Law Act, and restore the constitutional basis for the American system of government and the rule of law.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose this amendment, as it would allow the President to rewrite the civil rights laws on his own without any accountability in court.

The amendment, if adopted, would literally provide that nothing in the bill shall affect any action taken by the President or by the head of an agency or, indeed, any action taken by ``any other officer or employee of the United States,'' with regards to the protections provided under the civil rights laws.

If adopted, this amendment would immunize from accountability in court this President and any President and other Federal employees when they fail to enforce the civil rights laws, as written.

What if a President decides that certain groups should not be protected under the civil rights laws and fails to enforce those laws to protect certain groups?

Indeed, what if any entry-level employee of the Federal Government decides the civil rights laws should not be enforced to protect certain groups that are protected under the clear terms of the civil rights laws?

This amendment, if adopted, would immunize the President or any entry-level employee of the executive branch from accountability.

In fact, this amendment stands for the very policy this bill opposes. This bill provides for holding accountable the President or any other Federal employee whenever they fail to faithfully execute the law.

This amendment, in stark contrast, would prevent the Federal courts from ordering the President and other Federal officials to enforce the civil rights laws when they are failing to faithfully execute them.

It was a sad day when Members of this House stood up and applauded this President when he said, during his State of the Union Address, that he would seek to circumvent Congress when the people's duly elected Representatives oppose his proposals and when a senior member of the Senate called for the President to unilaterally stop enforcing the law against certain individuals if legislation is not passed by September, as Senator Schumer did last Thursday.

It is another sad day when an amendment is offered to explicitly shield the President or any other Federal employee from accountability when their actions are not authorized by the laws enacted by the people's elected Representatives.

The President should not be above the law; and by that, I mean any law, not the least of which are the civil rights laws of the United States.

Because this amendment would codify the terrible policy of allowing a President carte blanche to enforce or not enforce the civil rights laws as he deems fit, it should be opposed by every Member of this body, especially those who would like to see the civil rights laws protect everyone, as they are written.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from New York.

Reclaiming my time, the amendment is clear that it would prohibit the language of the bill from bringing a lawsuit when the President fails to enforce the civil rights laws.

Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Nadler's amendment purports to clarify that nothing in this legislation limits or otherwise affects prosecutorial discretion. If this amendment is adopted, it will only serve to cause confusion regarding the scope of the President's duty under the Take Care Clause and the ability of Congress to bring a lawsuit pursuant to this legislation.

The underlying bill provides that the House or Senate may authorize a lawsuit based upon adoption of a resolution declaring that the executive branch ``established or implemented a formal or informal policy, practice, or procedure to refrain from enforcing'' Federal law in violation of the Take Care Clause.

Adoption of a ``policy, practice, or procedure'' is not an exercise in prosecutorial discretion; rather, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion involves a determination as to whether a particular individual or entity should be the subject of an enforcement action for past conduct.

In other words, nothing in this bill limits prosecutorial discretion. Thus, inserting into the bill an exception for the undefined term ``prosecutorial discretion'' would only serve to cause confusion.

Worse, including an exception for prosecutorial discretion would also allow the executive branch to move to dismiss every case brought pursuant to this bill on the grounds that it was merely exercising prosecutorial discretion. This would result in costly and wasteful delays in the court's ability to decide the merits of these important separation of powers disputes in a timely manner.

Additionally, if adopted, the amendment would cause confusion as to the meaning of the Take Care Clause itself. The clause imposes an affirmative duty on the President to ``take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'' This amendment proposes to interpret that duty by codifying into statutory law that there is a ``constitutional authority of the executive branch to exercise prosecutorial discretion.''

However, unlike the duty imposed by the Take Care Clause, the words ``prosecutorial discretion'' appear nowhere in the text of the Constitution. We should not place an undefined limit on the Take Care Clause into the United States Code.

Finally, the amendment would, in practice, act to prohibit the Federal courts from further refining the contours of appropriate prosecutorial discretion. The base bill seeks to encourage courts to engage in active constitutional issues, not to put entire categories of subjects off-limits from review by the Federal courts.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire how much time each side has remaining?

At this time, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Gowdy).

Mr. Chairman, for the reasons already cited, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment which would gut the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 511 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule, H. Res. 511, which provides for a structured rule as relates to H.R. 4138, ENFORCE the Law Act, and H.R. 3973, the Faithful Execution of the Law Act. The rule gives the House an opportunity to debate a variety of amendments, all offered by Members from the other side of the aisle.

Both of the underlying bills, the ENFORCE the Law Act and the Faithful Execution of the Law Act, aim to halt an increasingly Imperial Presidency.

The Faithful Execution of the Law Act is straightforward legislation that expands reporting requirements, forcing increased disclosure and transparency when the executive branch employs a policy of nonenforcement of Federal laws.

Current law dictates that a report must be submitted to Congress when the nonenforcement policy is adopted on the grounds that a Federal law is unconstitutional. This bill would simply expand that report to include any instance in which a policy of not enforcing Federal law is established, regardless of the reason. For the self-proclaimed ``most transparent administration in history,'' this really shouldn't be a problem.

The other piece of underlying legislation, the ENFORCE the Law Act, puts procedures in place to allow authorizations of lawsuits against the President for failure to faithfully execute the laws. It would also expedite judicial review, which is badly needed given the length of time it takes for these types of cases to be heard; mostly, they are never heard.

The fact of the matter is that we desperately need a way to ensure the executive branch is upholding its responsibility to enforce the law faithfully. Every day it seems the President is using more and more unilateral actions to achieve his agenda. I understand that Congress and the administration are going to have differences over time. Our Constitution basically guarantees there are going to be differences between the administration and the House and the Senate, but I would like to think that a President wouldn't just abandon our constitutional principles of governing because it is difficult to get what he wants.

I am sure some will argue that a legislative fix to the President's unilateral actions aren't needed. They will say the President has prosecutorial discretion and so that entitles him to make these changes in enforcement or delay certain provisions of the law.

But we are really not talking about individual cases, Mr. Speaker. We are not here today because we are concerned with the administration using discretion on a case-by-case basis. What we are concerned with is the President employing blanket policies of nonenforcement. In some instances, the President isn't just ignoring enforcement of the laws; he is effectively rewriting them.

Now, I understand the President isn't the first to expand executive power under his watch. He is not the first President to do that. In fact, Congress has failed to protect article I powers for decades. This House and the Senate have been in dereliction because they haven't actually protected article I powers.

The pace of expansion of power, though, should alarm every Member of this body. Take the President's recess appointments, for example. They have already been deemed unconstitutional by the D.C. circuit court in a unanimous--unanimous--decision.

The court rejected the administration's argument that the President has the discretion to determine when the Senate is in recess.

The court explained:

Allowing the President to define the scope of his own

appointments power would eviscerate the Constitution's

separation of powers.

Mr. Speaker, the President's actions aren't in danger of disrupting the legislative process; they already are disrupting it.

What assurances do we have that the President won't just change the law once we have passed it? What guarantees do we have that the President won't suspend parts of the law that we believe are important?

The truth is, Mr. Speaker, we don't have that assurance. The truth is, Mr. Speaker, we can't trust the President to enforce any would-be law equally and faithfully, and that is a shame.

If anyone thinks the President's unilateral actions aren't a big deal because they happen to agree with him on the policy, well then, Mr. Speaker, they have badly missed the point.

All Presidents--all Presidents--have probably pushed the limit of their power, and it is our responsibility, this House, to check that power. We are a nation of laws. We ought to fight to keep it that way. We can no longer sit by and watch Congress' constitutional role in our government eroded.

This rule is to allow us to consider legislative addressing this growing problem. This rule ensures that ideas from Members on either side of the aisle are included in consideration of the underlying legislation.

I support this rule, and I hope all my colleagues will also.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I need to go back to when I first took the oath of office as a police officer outside of Chicago and then as a deputy sheriff in Florida and then a sheriff in Florida and then here in this body and also when I joined the military.

It was to support and defend the Constitution, not to ignore the Constitution, not to utilize it when we think it is okay or when it is necessary, not to just skip over article I and say: Do you know what? Forget about it because our Congresses have done that.

My good friend from Massachusetts pointed that out. They have done it for 30 years, but that doesn't make it right. At some point in time, we have got to set the record straight.

Somebody has got to step up and say: Do you know what? The Constitution matters, what we do here matters, and that all of us--the three branches of government--need to work, and they are coequal, not one above the other.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).

Mr. Speaker, all I can tell you is that I don't take it as a joke in our defending and protecting the Constitution, which gives us the ability to serve here today. The people gave us the ability to be here based upon what the Constitution laid out for us. That is the plan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Mrs. Roby).

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

I just want to make a couple of things clear.

In the Judiciary Committee, they did have two hearings on this. Now, they

took some action to bring forward one of these bills based upon the hearings and the testimony that they did have.

I truly believe in the open process. We want to see that, and I think we agree on that. My good friend from Massachusetts even read an article about George W. Bush and about that Presidency and that someone said that this Congress--or that Congress back then--should actually do something to allow it to go to court. I believe that was the statement. I am paraphrasing it. That is exactly what this does. I can't help it. I wasn't here when George W. Bush was President--I wasn't here 4 years ago--but I am here today, and I am here to defend and support this Constitution.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), a good friend of mine.

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

All I can say, again, is that as it relates to these bills, there was discussion in the hearings and testimony taken to the concept and the ideas behind these bills.

Mr. Speaker, we hear about, this is partisan. It doesn't say ``President Barack Obama.'' This says ``the President.'' It doesn't matter if it is Republican or Democrat, Mr. Speaker. It says ``the President.'' It has nothing to do

specifically with President Obama, but it has everything to do with protecting the Constitution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I agree with much of what my colleague from Massachusetts said, particularly as it relates to our involvement in Afghanistan and the Karzai regime.

Let me read you some quotes, Mr. Speaker, and let's see who we thought said these quotes:

The power of what has begun to be termed the Imperial

Presidency grows, and the ability of our Democratic

institutions, especially the Federal legislative branch to

constrain it, seems more uncertain.

The next quote:

We are a coequal branch of government, and if our system of

checks and balances is going to operate, it is imperative

that we understand how the executive branch is enforcing or

ignoring the bills that are signed into law.

And:

We are talking about a systematic extra-constitutional mode

of conduct by the White House. The conduct threatens to

deprive the American people of one of the basic rights of any

democracy, the right to elect Representatives who determine

what the law is, subject only to the President's veto. That

does not mean having a President sign those laws but then say

he is free to carry them out or not as only he sees fit.

Another quote:

I believe it is in all of our interests to work together to

rein in any excesses of the executive branch, whether it is

in Democratic, Republican, or even Libertarian hands.

Lastly, I will suggest to you that all those quotes I just read were from a highly respected Democrat, Mr. Conyers, talking about the George W. Bush Presidency.

What has changed? That is what we are talking about today.

This isn't about Republicans or Democrats. Even Mr. Conyers said that that is a problem, that we are giving up what we are supposed to be doing here in the legislative branch, legislating.

The President has a right to veto, but when he signs it into law, he has an obligation to faithfully execute the laws that he signs, he signs into law.

Mr. Speaker, in an interview with The New York Times last July, the President was asked whether or not he had the legal constitutional authority to delay the employer mandates, and

the President's response was this, Mr. Speaker, speaking about Members of Congress: ``I am not concerned about their opinions. Very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.''

Well, Mr. Speaker, he is right in one regard. Most of us aren't constitutional lawyers, and I am certainly glad the President is proud of his academic achievements.

It doesn't take a constitutional lawyer to understand that we have separation of powers in this country, and that is what makes us unique. It doesn't take a constitutional lawyer to understand that the President can't just pick and choose which laws to enforce and which ones, don't worry about; we don't have to enforce it. Any eighth-grade civics student can tell you that.

Our Constitution explicitly states, the President shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. It is even in the oath of office. It doesn't say if I disagree with them that means I don't have to worry about that. It is in the oath of office that he is supposed to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I take that oath to support and defend the Constitution very seriously. I did it when I raised my hand at 18 years old when I went into the Air Force. I did it when I was 21 years old when I became a police officer outside of Chicago. I did it again when I was a deputy sheriff. I did it again when I was sheriff, and I did it when I got elected to Congress, now, a second time. I take that oath personal.

I have three sons that serve this country today. They have all raised their hand to support and defend this Constitution, not when it is convenient, not when it meets what I need out of it. It says you do it.

That is the law. That is the Constitution, and we kind of forget that. We say it is just a document. It is a dusty document.

That is not the case, Mr. Speaker. It talks about how we conduct ourselves as a government of the people and by the people, not because of who we are.

I am concerned, on quite a few instances now, this President clearly hasn't faithfully executed those laws. Just recently, the President yet again announced a delay in the implementation of ObamaCare. The administration says they will continue to allow insurance companies to offer plans that don't meet ObamaCare's coverage requirements.

How many delays does that make, Mr. Speaker?

I have no idea. I have lost count. I haven't kept track. There have been a lot of them because they all hit the front page, most of them hit the front page of the papers.

Just because the President's health care law isn't working doesn't mean the President can just change it on the fly. I understand it is what he wants. It is the implementation of a law, but don't say you can just change it willy-nilly. The President is literally making it up as he goes along.

Delaying the consequences of ObamaCare, however, does not fix them. Perhaps our colleagues are facing frustrated constituents that just aren't quite ready to defend the law yet. Maybe that is the case.

Perhaps it is themselves that these delays are really meant for. I don't know.

Nevertheless, I don't object to delaying ObamaCare, just the President's desire not to have come to Congress to do it. Congress enacted it. Congress has a right, then, to modify it, not the President.

The fact is, a lot of these plans are good fits for consumers. Cancellations they face, the higher premiums and deductibles, are a real hardship. That doesn't change the fact that the means through which the President changed the policy is wrong, and we all know it.

It is time for this body to come together to prevent our constitutional role from disintegrating further. It matters not what has occurred in the last 40 years, it matters what occurs today. It matters to the people I represent that I faithfully support and defend the Constitution.

It is time this body pushed back against any Presidency that would assert itself, whether it was Mr. Conyers speaking of the prior Presidents or it is us speaking about this current President.

I am confident that the underlying legislation, the rule that it provides for, will start the process, and I urge my colleagues, if you care about protecting our three-branch system of government, support this rule and support the underlying legislation.

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

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, more of the same. As with our consideration of the ``ENFORCE Act,'' H.R. 4138, I must note the lack of deliberative process pertaining to consideration of this bill.

The gentleman from South Carolina spoke eloquently on the other bill and talked about the need for process--the importance of process. Process can be important, but process was not important on this bill.

It wasn't important in the other bill. Like that other bill, the Judiciary Committee failed to hold a single legislative hearing.

The process is you have a hearing. People come in and talk--experts--

then you have a markup. You first start at the subcommittee. The subcommittee has a hearing, and they have a markup, and then you have a hearing and a markup in the full committee.

This one, not a hearing in the subcommittee, not a markup in the subcommittee, not a hearing in the committee; simply, all of a sudden-- presto--markup, process nixed. That is how we came up with the last bill and this bill.

When coupled with the fact that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle provided only the minimum notice regarding this bill, it is hard to believe that this is a serious attempt to legislate because it tramples on the legislative process, the rights of the minority to have notice, the rights of the public to have notice, and the right to have a hearing with experts testifying.

Unfortunately, the end product evidences what happens when you don't follow regular order, which is due process, notice, and a hearing. We do the same thing here.

Here are just a few of the problems with this bill: H.R. 3973 would impose burdensome and wasteful requirements on the Justice Department to the detriment of its law enforcement functions. They would probably have to hire new personnel and increase the debt, which, of course, the other side always talks about being passed on to the next generation.

Section 530D of title 28 of the United States Code already requires the Attorney General to report to Congress any instance in which the Attorney General or any Justice Department official establishes or implements a formal or informal policy against enforcing, applying, or administering a provision of Federal law on the grounds that such provision is unconstitutional, and there are 94 U.S. attorneys and a whole bunch of agency heads and a whole bunch of cabinet members and folks.

Current law, therefore, allows an administration to refuse to enforce a law in the extremely limited circumstance where law is deemed unconstitutional. No other reason is sufficient.

H.R. 3973 fails to define exactly which individuals in the Federal Government would qualify as a ``Federal officer.'' There is nowhere in the USCA that I have seen--and we have researched it--where this Congress has defined a Federal officer, and yet we are instructing Federal officers.

Now, the courts might have had some gibberish, but this Congress never did.

As a result of this oversight, the Attorney General would have to review enforcement decisions by hundreds--if not thousands--of individuals who work in the executive branch and may qualify as officers in order to determine whether their decisions trigger the requirements in this bill. This burden would drain already limited resources in the Justice Department for its law enforcement responsibilities, which is its charge.

The majority's real purpose of H.R. 3973 is to prevent the President's implementation of duly enacted legislative initiatives that they oppose and to stymie the President's discretion in enforcement of those laws.

Allowing flexibility in the implementation of a new program, even where the statute mandates a specific deadline, is neither unusual nor a constitutional violation. And it has happened with administration to administration to administration.

Such flexibility is inherent in the President's duty to ``take care'' that he ``faithfully'' execute the laws. And the exercise of enforcement discretion is a traditional power of the Executive.

Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the exercise of such discretion is a function of the President's powers under the Take Care Clause, and this was reiterated by the Court as recently as 2012 in Arizona v. United States. This is particularly true if the bill's proponents intend to reach decisions like the deferred action on removing DREAMers from the country. That decision was a routine exercise of enforcement discretion, but H.R. 3973 would require the Attorney General to report on every such routine decision to Congress. You can't enforce every law to the fullest, and prosecutors and people make decisions on which are the most important and which are prioritized.

Professor Christopher Schroeder, the minority witness on the Judiciary Committee, noted that the number of such enforcement decisions is simply too numerous to count.

Given the foregoing, I must reiterate that this process is a waste of our time, especially when there are other far more pressing concerns to address.

How many times have we had people call us and tell us that they need unemployment compensation, that they don't have money to buy goods, to buy food for their child, to buy food for themselves, or to provide shelter? And yet unemployment insurance has lapsed.

How many times do we have people say they want to work and get a job, but we haven't passed an infrastructure bill. That is usually a bipartisan measure. For years, it has been bipartisan. Mr. Bill Young worked well on these bills getting things done. We don't have infrastructure bills to keep us going and deliver goods and services and put people to work.

How many times have people come up and talked to us about their concerns about health care, when we could be maybe coming together and finding ways to make health care even more affordable? The Affordable Care Act was a beginning, giving a lot of people health care they otherwise didn't have. In my district, the differential between African American women and White women in morbidity on breast cancer is the greatest it is in the country. And throughout the country, African American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than Caucasian.

Why is that?

It is not in their genes. No, Madam Speaker, it is not in their genes. It is because they have not had access to insurance and health facilities to get mammograms, to get checkups, and to get treated. They don't have the ability to get to those health centers which have been funded through the Affordable Care Act, more and more community health centers because of the Affordable Care Act, and to get insurance, which they are getting insurance. But in the past they haven't gotten it, their morbidity rate is greater, and they have died. Sometimes it is because they don't have transportation to get to the doctors, and that is because of our limited resources that we put in funding mass transit.

So in so many areas which we have neglected and should be dealing with now on health care issues, on the environment, on immigration, taking people out from the shadows and putting them to work legally where they pay taxes and where young people brought here with their parents made great grades in school, could go to college and stay here, participate and fulfill their dream and fulfill their potential, work hard and play by the rules, we are not doing that.

Instead of using this limited legislative time we have got, this is yet another opportunity to bash immigrants or to rail against giving health insurance to those who would otherwise be without it. We should be addressing these broken systems that we have on immigration, helping struggling homeowners and students buried in debt and fighting discrimination among many other challenges facing our great Nation, allowing people every opportunity to vote rather than taking voting opportunities away from them at every opportunity possible. That is the antithesis of America, trying to deny people the opportunity to vote under the veil of identity.

We are doing a disservice to the American people in choosing to spend our time on these issues which are issues that are not going to pass the Senate and see the light of day--and we know it--instead of trying to come together and work with each other. I have reached out to Members on the other side and said: Why don't we find common ground and pass something? They kind of look at me and say: I get my orders, too. Unfortunately, the orders aren't working for the American people.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Before I yield to Ms. Lofgren, I would just like to comment a couple of things.

Without disrespect to our Founding Fathers--I revere them all alike-- but Mr. Franks was talking about President Madison and the noble experiment and asked the rhetorical question, all people were equal under the law--except for African Americans who were slaves, people who couldn't pay a poll tax, and women. So let's get away from this homogenized perspective of the way the world was and try to get to the way the world should be.

Daniel Webster has a quote up there, by bringing forth all of our resources, develop our resources and our land and its institutions, so that while we are here, we, in our day and our generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

Well, we are not doing that today. And the references to the IRS have been debunked. They were equally applied to people who used organizations, 501(c)(4)s, beyond their original purpose. It was not anything political. And that goes to show the basic nature of this, because it is another attack on the President of the United States.

The President said: whenever I can take action without legislation. When he can take it without legislation, when he is permitted.

With that, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say that Federal officer may be mentioned many times in the code, but not defined; not defined.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just like to respond a little bit to what was said, and it was said in a previous discussion by my friend from South Carolina about why Congress is in such disrepute. He was thinking, if we pass this bill, people will think better of us.

I would submit the reason Congress is in such disrepute is because the GOP shut down the government. People don't know about how you make a bill, per se, but they know they want their government opened. When they come to Washington, they want to go to different places. The GOP shut down the government for 17 days, and that is wrong.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lofgren).

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

First, I want to set the record straight before we get too much revisionist history here. Yesterday in the Rules Committee, the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee, Mr. Sessions, said that President Obama liked the law so much--the Affordable Care Act--that he had it named for himself. Today, my friend from Iowa said they put his name on it.

Well, he didn't define ``they.'' It wasn't us. It's the Affordable Care Act, Patient Protection Act. It was the opponents of the bill, them, that started calling it ``ObamaCare,'' thinking that would be a pejorative, and they have gotten so used to it, they think we did it. Take credit for what you do, but forgive them, for maybe they don't know what they do.

I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Yes, I am.

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

I would just like to say that while this legislation and the previous legislation is going nowhere, we should be dealing with the issues that face the American people, the serious issue of jobs and the environment and global warming and immigration reform and drug reform and freedom and liberty and justice and the American way.

I admire the Speaker. She is a fine woman and does a great job and has done a good job presiding today. And many of the Republicans, even though I don't agree with them, I think they are nice people, and most people here try to do the right thing. Unfortunately, some of the policies that they have I think put the country in a wrong direction, but they are basically nice people.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

You said you would definitely get a whole bunch of folks on both sides of the aisle?

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 511, I call up the bill (H.R. 3973) to amend section 530D of title 28, United States Code, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3973, currently under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I now yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the distinguished chairman of the full Judiciary Committee.

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

I begin by just pointing out, contrary to the gentleman's assertion, the term ``Federal officer'' is mentioned 238

times in the Federal Code, and the Dictionary Act defines ``officer.'' It includes any person authorized by law to perform the duties of the office.

Contrary to some of the other discussions, this bill is focused on trying to make sure that we faithfully enforce the laws and that we understand when the laws are perhaps being not enforced for persons suggesting that they are unconstitutional or otherwise.

So, Madam Speaker, it is inherent, I suppose, in the nature of Washington, D.C., politics that, at a certain point, all of the back- and-forth discussion eventually turns into white noise, and the continual debating, reporting, and blaming is so commonplace that many Americans tune it out entirely.

And just as the partisanship in Washington causes so many to tune out the substance of the debate, so do we also become accustomed sometimes to hearing lofty rhetoric and allusions to our Founding Fathers. But tonight, I pray that we can all truly listen anew to the men whose ideas so revolutionized the world because the challenges we now face were not unforeseen, Madam Speaker.

James Madison, in Federalist Paper 48, expressed his concern that eventually the mere rule of law might not be enough to restrain those who really had a mind to abuse the power of their office. He said:

Will it be sufficient to mark, with precision, the

boundaries of these departments, in the Constitution of the

government, and to trust to these parchment barriers against

the encroaching spirit of power? But experience assures us,

that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly

overrated; and that some more adequate defense is

indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more

powerful, members of the government.

When Madison originally published this paper in 1788, he did so using the title, ``These Departments Should Not Be So Far Separated as to Have No Constitutional Control Over Each Other.''

Mr. Madison expressed these concerns only 12 years after America had declared its independence. And I would submit that in the intervening 226 years, these abuses have spiraled out of control.

I would urge Americans to ask themselves: Has this administration moved our Nation back toward the noble dream imagined by men like James Madison when all laws were equally enforced and all people are equal under those laws, or has this administration worsened the trend Madison detected so early on?

President Obama infamously said on this very floor, Madam Speaker:

We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in

order to make sure that we are providing Americans the kind

of help they need. I have got a pen, and I have got a phone.

And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take

executive actions and administrative actions that move the

ball forward.

To this I would humbly respond, Madam Speaker, no, he can't, not if what he is doing is abrogating the Constitution of the United States. That is exactly the sort of overreach Madison warned us about, and it is exactly what we are referencing when we talk about an Imperial Presidency.

Unfortunately, Madam Speaker, we are dealing with a President who has admitted he would prefer to be unconfined by constitutional limitations. He specifically said:

Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation,

that is what I am going to do.

Madam Speaker, they say that to be forewarned is to be forearmed. This President has not been shy about his intentions to go beyond the Constitution when he is inclined. Under this administration, the IRS has become a political tool used against those who oppose the President's policies. The Justice Department has adopted a policy of selective law enforcement, essentially rewriting the law by only enforcing the ones they prefer. The Senate's role in the appointment process has been ignored outright, with the administration making so- called recess appointments, even though the Senate was not in recess.

The legislative branch has been deemed little more than an inconvenient hurdle, with legislation like the DREAM Act and ObamaCare being either imposed via fiat or grossly and repeatedly modified without the input, consent, or action on the part of Congress.

We have seen the unconstitutional seizure of reporters' phone records, reported spying even on Members of Congress, and attempting to force small businesses to disclose their political affiliations before being considered for Federal contracts. At what point, Madam Speaker, do we say enough is enough?

I would remind all of us of the pleading words of Daniel Webster to all Americans when he said:

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution, and to the

Republic for which it stands, for miracles do not cluster,

and what has happened once in 6,000 years may never happen

again. So hold on to the Constitution, for if the American

Constitution should fall, there will be anarchy throughout

the world.

Madam Speaker, the Faithful Execution of the Law Act is one very important step in the right direction. This bill will help prevent executive overreach and require greater disclosure when it does occur.

I want to thank Congressman DeSantis for bringing this legislation forward. I want to thank Chairman Goodlatte for his steadfast leadership on bringing this administration's executive overreach to light, and I would urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. DeSantis).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I would just point out that this bill does not anticipate the appropriateness of one law or another, just the inappropriateness of ignoring the law in general.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I now yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Madam Speaker, I would ask if the gentleman is prepared to close.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of the time.

I would say, Madam Speaker, in spite of the many unrelated issues that my friends on the left have brought up to bear on this bill, this bill is about the rule of law. Madam Speaker, I would remind all of us that the rule of law is what we had that little unpleasant discussion with England about so many years ago. After that we wrote a Constitution, and every person in this body swore to defend that Constitution, and that is what we are trying to do here.

If we now, as legislators in the United States Congress, are willing to stand idly by and let the President of the United States arrogate legislative power unto himself and dismiss the Constitution, then we would be obligated, Madam Speaker, to apologize for our oaths and dismiss the dream of human freedom and step back and board this place up and go home.

I would suggest to you, Madam Speaker, that some of us are not prepared and willing to do that. And so to that end, to the end that we can uphold the rule of law, I would encourage my colleagues to pass this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

Madam Speaker, I would oppose the amendment, as it would explicitly grant the Attorney General the unilateral power to negate the entire bill based on his own subjective determination of what constitutes ``sufficient'' appropriations.

This amendment would shield from accountability the President, the Attorney General, and any other Federal employee from the duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

Madam Speaker, we know that this bill will not cost the taxpayers any money, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. As stated in their official view submitted, CBO estimates:

Enacting the bill would not affect direct spending or revenues.

CBO estimates that implementation of the bill would not have a significant effect on the budget because such reporting costs are small and subject already to the availability of appropriated funds.

So, Madam Speaker, why does this amendment grant the Attorney General the unilateral authority to conclude otherwise?

Well, Madam Speaker, the Attorney General works for the President, and when given the opportunity to immunize the President from accountability, what does one think the Attorney General would do? It is logical to assume he would shield the President from accountability.

The base bill is specifically designed to hold the President accountable. This amendment, on the other hand, would allow his own Attorney General to shield the President from accountability, thereby gutting the bill, and so this amendment should be roundly defeated.

Madam Speaker, we have had significant debate here, but it is important to remind ourselves what it really is all about. The rule of law is truly the only context in which human freedom on Earth can exist. It is incumbent upon those of us who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States to protect that rule of law here tonight. This is the intention of this bill. This is the deep commitment that should be on the part of all of us.

With that, I hope my colleagues would defeat this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.