Congressional Award Program Reauthorization Act of 2013

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 367 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to my dear friend from New York (Ms. Slaughter), the ranking member of the Rules Committee, 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, House Resolution 367, of which we're here for today, provides for consideration of the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the Continuing Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2014.

Mr. Speaker, at midnight tonight, just a few short hours from now, the Federal Government will shut down if Congress, that is both the House and the Senate, do not act to provide the necessary appropriations to run our government. The legislation before us today will ensure that a shutdown does not happen, and we will take important steps to ensure that ObamaCare, known as the Affordable Care Act, does not have the opportunity to hurt American jobs and continue to drag down our economy by delaying the individual mandate for 1 year. Additionally, this CR will ensure that Congress is not exempt from ObamaCare and that Members and their staffs do not receive a special taxpayer-funded health care subsidy.

These are important issues, Mr. Speaker. They're being talked about all across America today. They were talked about on Sunday at tables all across America as families gathered together about the rightness of what we, as Republicans, are attempting to do, and that is we are attempting to save this country and the American people, the free enterprise system, and free people from having to have a government-run health care system.

This government-run health care system has already been estimated to cost twice what it was expected to do, and since this health care law has come into play, for every one full-time job, there have been six part-time jobs created. We do not want a part-time working America, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our country cannot be the greatest Nation in the world if we're a part-time working society.

Mr. Speaker, the American people did not agree with this bill at the time it was passed. Despite that, the Democrats rammed this through the House and the Senate, and it was signed by the President in record time while millions of Americans were protesting all across America the same day it was passed in the House.

Mr. Speaker, this has been an issue that has harmed American businesses. Business leaders, businessmen, unions, and union leaders are all gathering together to say this is the wrong thing to do.

The law takes advantage of those people who have health care today. It is a direct violation of what the President said it would do; and in my State of Texas, if you have a deceptive trade practice, if you sell something one way and the product is another, it is talked about in a way that it would be against the law.

What we're trying to do is change the law. Republicans, over the last few years, have tried to delay it, defund it, get in the way of it, change it, talk about it, and to engage the President of the United States at the highest levels.

We are now at a point where there is a must-pass piece of legislation. Republicans do not intend to shut down the government; but we are insistent, Mr. Speaker, that the legislation that we bring forth today will level the playing field on a terrible piece of legislation.

The American people sense the unfairness, and they have seen it take place in their marketplace, in their workplace. And as we all become unemployed or move to part-time work, we will see that this devastating law of a ``one-size-fits-all for everybody'' health care plan, run by the government, is not a wise way to go. So that's why we're here on the floor today.

Republicans are on the floor today. We were here earlier in the week. We were here last week. We've been here ever since the day it was passed. We are consistent in our behavior. Every single Republican believes this is a bad way to do things. I think business sees that too.

The American people, in a poll of The New York Times and in a CBS poll just last week, 60 percent of those who responded to The New York Times and CBS said that they are not supportive of this bill.

So will someone stand up for the American people? Dadgum right: it's called the Republican Party. Our great Speaker and our great leader, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, have asked us to come to the floor today to move a bill; and the Republican Conference is there. We're hoping that the United States Senate and the American people all get together on this, and then President Obama will see the wisdom behind learning from mistakes that have been made in the past.

I have every reason to believe that what we're doing here will be good for the American people. We will listen to the voices, and we will move forth together. We're giving everybody a chance to be heard from today, and tonight will be an opportunity for the American people to know that it was

the Republican Party that stood up on their behalf.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The gentlewoman from New York, my dear friend, makes many, many important points about not only the law that was passed but about maybe some comments about what we're doing here.

I have great sympathy, respect for men and women, people, children, seniors who are born with diseases that sometimes emanate during their lives, great respect for that. And I do agree with the gentlewoman that our government, in a public-private partnership--we are working with States--should, needs to, must create a better system to take care of those who are uninsured, or maybe had been ``uninsurable.''

And this is where, for years, there had been a big debate in Washington about how to best do that. And the facts of the case are real simple: that every time we had an opportunity in the Republican Party to try to get that

done, it became a point of decisionmaking by the Senate, and they blink. The House many times passed all sorts of bills that would allow people to be insured across State lines, better ways to make larger team sizes for insurance so that risk pools would have a better opportunity to be managed.

But instead of us taking care of some 23 million to 30 million people who were in this circumstance, the bill aimed at 230 million people. And it put rules and regulations and restrictions on business and hiring. And it was less about coverage and more about a hammer from Washington, D.C. There are lots of examples of this; but one of them might be the IPAB, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which the Democrats wrote into the law that it could not receive any legislative or judicial updating. You could not challenge the law that they decided on of benefits and payments. That's just one part of this outrageously expensive and overbearing health care bill. We've talked about that. We've talked about how expensive it is and how it's causing business--

Delta Air Lines, as an example. And Delta Air Lines has a very good plan. But they came to the administration in February this last year and said, it's going to cost Delta Air Lines $100 million more in just the first year.

Now, that's not helping people. That's highway robbery. That is harming business, harming the free enterprise system.

Mr. Speaker, I'm for balance. I'm for reasonableness. I'm for opportunities, and so is my party. But we are not for diminishing the greatest economy in the world by arbitrarily doing it with a one-size- fits-all ObamaCare that not one Republican voted for and that Democrats are still gleeful about.

So we're here today; we've been here for quite some time, as the gentlewoman admitted, yes, day after day. We're kind of relentless about this because we're worried about what's happening. We've seen employment figures, higher taxes, more spending, more government. Oh, by the way, indecision along the way, where the administration really can't figure out what they're doing.

So what we're saying is that we think everybody ought to be into the same bucket that employers are in, and that is we've already delayed it, so we should do the same for individuals.

And we're going to shut down the government over that?

That's the question. We're going to shut down the government, Republicans, because we want to put individuals on the same footing as what President Obama gave a pass to business?

Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm from Texas, and I recognize that we like freedom and opportunity and less taxes and more opportunities. By golly, we employ a lot of people. But I think the whole country sees this, and what the whole country sees is the reasonableness that the Republican Party comes to the floor--and we're going to keep the battle going--to say we think everybody, at least the individual, ought to be treated the same as business. We think the President of the United States made a mistake, and we're politely, today, trying to say: Mr. President, can we please fix that mistake? Can we please give to the individuals of this country, men and women who pay their taxes and work hard, can we give them equal representation with what you gave to people who run businesses?

Now, I'm a business guy, but I'm also an individual, and that's why the Republican Party is doing what we're doing, Mr. Speaker. We are not asking for anything that's unreasonable. As a matter of fact, we're going to--if I'd hurry up, we could get it quickly to the floor to where we could vote on this, but an explanation's necessary.

Reasonableness, common sense, and doing the right thing, and that's what the Republican Party is here doing. That's what our great Speaker, John Boehner, is doing. That's what our awesome majority leader, Eric Cantor, is doing.

We are going to bring to the floor--our Republican majority will be here--and we're going to pass this that says we believe the same thing that happens to business, where the Obama administration was not ready for them and so they gave them a pass for a year, we think the same thing is true for individuals.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Knoxville, Tennessee (Mr. Duncan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the favorite son of Humble, Texas (Mr. Poe).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Lewisville, Texas (Mr. Burgess), a member of the Rules Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee.

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

I appreciate my dear friend, the gentleman from Maryland, coming to the floor and speaking. But I want to say something real fast, if we can, Mr. Speaker. This is to fund the government.

The second part. This is to say that the President of the United States gave a pass to business. The pass was because the President has not provided enough content and information to business to let them know how it's supposed to work. But we're not going to do the same for individuals.

And that's what this legislation says. We're going to fund the government. We're not trying to stop having people from receiving things. We're trying to say, Give us the same opportunity. Because the individuals that it does help, I do have a sense of responsibility about them. But those times thousands of more who will be harmed by what we're doing is not a balance that Republicans can put up with--the overriding effect.

So, in fact, we're here, and I can look myself straight in the mirror, Mr. Speaker. We're trying to do the right thing for the American people.

At this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee and a very bright young man.

Mr. Speaker, some of my favorites in the Democratic Party

are taking their chances to come down tonight in this spirited debate and opportunity--the very best of the Democratic Party is here. I admire these men. I began serving with Mr. Davis some 17 years ago. He's one of the most honorable and respected Members of this body, and I'm delighted that Danny has come down.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the Sixth District of Florida (Mr. DeSantis).

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reed), the former mayor of Corning.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from California, not only for coming down, but for her kind words about many commonsense things. I think she also knows that this bill that's before us tonight is not to shut down the government.

I come from a family that the former Speaker has known for a long, long time. She knows a lot about me. I'm a part of this bill. I was taught by my father, yes, but also others, that you stay at the table until you get something done. It may be a little bit late at night; it may take a little bit of hard work; it may take some creative thinking. And then the athlete in me says you run through the tape. As a track guy, I always ran through the tape. As a football guy, I ran until the clock went out.

I think what the Republican Party is here trying to say is we are here at work. We are going to get our work done. We are challenging the United States Senate to do the same. We are going to pass this bill tonight because it's the right thing to do. We will stay open tonight and we'll receive their, in ping-pong terms, the ping and the pong back and forth, and we'll be ready.

Mr. Speaker, I'm sure you'll stay on duty. You may drink a couple cups of coffee, but you're doing the right thing for the people of Johnson County, Kansas. I know where you are from and I know what kind of man you are.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy).

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

I would like to advise the gentlewoman I have no further speakers, and I'll wait for her to run through her time and close, then I will do the same.

That would be correct.

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

In closing, we are here tonight because the Republican Party recognizes that men and women of this country are worried about their future, worried about economics, worried about taking care of their family. We've seen food prices double since the President has been our President. We've seen energy prices double. We've seen more rules and regulations. We've seen a war on coal. We've seen all sorts of things that have taken place.

But taking over your health care is a pretty serious matter. We disagreed with it then, but we've tried to work with the President. We've had seven or eight bills that actually did work, but the President recognized that there were fraudulent parts of the bill that needed to be taken advantage of and we got rid of those.

Tonight, we are here to say ``fairness.'' You should not give one group of people one thing and not give to the others. Likewise, we believe the President of the United States and his administration should be in the exact same health care that Members of Congress are in. So I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and ``yes'' on the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Sessions) for yielding me the time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is certainly right: we have been here time after time after time on this issue. But we are standing on the brink of the worst government shutdown in modern history. Unlike 1994, the pending government shutdown would reach across the entire Federal Government. In 1994, half of the congressional appropriations bills had been signed into law by the President; and as a result, those Federal agencies were able to operate through the shutdown.

But this year, because of the draconian budget levels included in the misguided sequester, the majority was unable to pass a single appropriations bill into law. In fact, they ran out of money about halfway--well, certainly after we got through the Defense budget and, for the first time since I have been in Congress, were unable to pass the Transportation bill. And because of that, again, we find ourselves in this terrible position. Now as a result, should the government shut down, it is going to be more harmful and more widespread than the last one.

Mr. Speaker, these are very real and very serious consequences that we face, and it is in the face of these consequences that the majority has chosen to continue what can only be described as dangerous partisan games. We have, indeed, been here before. The first time, the majority wanted to defund the Affordable Care Act, and second, they decided to just delay it. But then on that bill, they threw in a chance to do away with the medical device tax, which will create a trillion-dollar deficit increase over the next 10 years and will hit women's reproductive rights next time.

Just today, we saw the first lady of Texas, Ms. Anita Perry, who said in an interview that abortion should be a woman's right and that she believed that women should have the right to choose; and we thank her for that and couldn't agree with her more.

But now what are we coming up with today? Well, we are not going to back away from anything. We are just going to try to kill the health care bill, which we know we can't do. It's taking effect tomorrow morning.

What we are going to do now, they say, is to delay the mandate, which is a large part of the funding for the bill; and in addition to that, they have decided that Members of Congress and our staff will not be able to get the government copay that most people get. In fact, most people who have health care in America get it from their employer. And we aren't going to be denied from being able to do that because the gentleman from Iowa, Senator Grassley, who claimed that he made a mistake, inserted that into the bill when he said just this week that he did not mean for us not to be a part of the government health care system, but that somebody had misinterpreted his idea and wrote it wrong. So that's where we are with that today.

But the majority's proposal before us today is going to do that, and they are going to say to all these young people who come to Washington with such promise and such energy and such verve, really, to try to do something good for their country and who look forward so much to being able to have the great privilege of working in the Capitol of the United States that they're not going to have help with their health insurance, driving many of those, I think, to leave and to find other work and others to really not be able to get the health care that they need.

So why did we do that? Heaven only knows. But, frankly, I would be embarrassed--and I have mentioned this in the Rules Committee--to look around the room at the staff that we praise all the time for their ingenuity, for their faithfulness, for their willingness to stay, as we did Sunday morning until 12:30, without ever making a complaint at all and punishing them through health care.

As offensive as this proposal is, it's a fitting example of the vision for America that the majority has. It's a vision of an America where insurance companies are put back in charge of the health care system, where price-gauging and price discrimination go unchecked, where the most vulnerable among us, including cancer patients, the victims of domestic violence and children born with preexisting conditions, could be denied access to health care.

The New York Times did some wonderful pieces on that in The Sunday Times yesterday, talking about people who have been burdened so much that they are literally bankrupt from the cost of health care. This bill takes every step to avoid that in the future.

I'm not sure that people understand that what happens is that we have turned around what used to be the yearly cap that insurance companies would charge their clients and now say that if you are a single person with health insurance, that once you have paid out of pocket $6,400 for medical procedures and medicine, the insurance company then for the rest of the year will pay your costs. What's not to like about that? If you are a family, $12,000 is the cost.

After seeing what we saw yesterday and reading in The Times that people with cancer many times were unable at all to try to even get the care and that we know--and I know from the work that we have done with cancer patients--that many of them go untreated. If there's anything worse than getting cancer, being diagnosed with cancer, it has to be being unable to pay for treatment.

These are the things that the majority wants to do away with. I've never seen so much work in all my life to try to prevent 30 million Americans--our brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, everybody--from being able to have health insurance, many of them for the first time in their lives.

I met a woman in the last campaign who told me that she was so excited because she had just signed up for Medicare. The woman was born with cerebral palsy; and under the present insurance laws, she was not at all insurable. So she went through her whole life, bringing up children, running a household, driving a car, all the things that could cause the kinds of accidents that leave you permanently impaired without a dime's worth of health insurance.

She was not alone in that. Children who had head injuries or other members of the family could often use up their lifetime limit of about $1 million in less than a year, and they were never insurable again in the United States. We're not going to go back to that.

So there's something we can do here today. What we can do is vote this down, go back to the Rules Committee, take up the Senate's clean bill, which is over here at the desk, pass that bill in the House and the Rules, bring it here, pass it in the House in a bipartisan way--by the way, that wouldn't hurt. And then lo and behold, that bill is ready to go to the President's desk, and we could get that signed. A shutdown would be averted. Health care would be available to people who desperately need it and desperately want it.

We should not continue to be the only industrialized country on the face of the Earth that does not provide health care for its people. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and the underlying legislation and demand that we pass the Senate bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis), a member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on the Budget.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

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

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democrat leader.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr), a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. Speaker, I have one further speaker. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, if my colleague has no further requests for time, I am prepared to close.

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

Today is a truly shameful day in the distinguished history of this House. Far from the noble mission that some from the other side may claim, what is before us is an extreme--and extremely cynical--attempt to extract a ransom from the American people. They have issued their demands knowing full well they will not be met. Yet they are taking another step towards a government shutdown in order to deny 30 million uninsured Americans health care.

Time has run out. We are down to our last chance. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on today's rule and the underlying legislation, and ask once more that we be given the opportunity to vote on the Senate bill, a clean bill, that can go directly to the President.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

I thank the gentlelady for yielding and for her leadership on this very important issue. And what is that issue? Do we, as Members of Congress, intend to honor our responsibilities to the American people by making tough choices to keep government open and working for the American people?

Mr. Speaker, this weekend, in the dead of night, the Republican majority had a simple, but clear, choice to make: they could make a choice to accept Democrats saying ``yes'' to them on their budget number to proceed to the negotiating table to come up with a budget for our country, or they could choose in the dead of night to continue, like hounds baying at the Moon, once again--for like the 44th and 45th time--to try to overturn the Affordable Care Act. And what did they choose--and I say this with great apology to hounds because I love dogs--they chose to bay to the Moon. It was a sad thing because so much is at stake.

We should all, as Members of Congress, have confidence in what we believe in and debate full throttle the issues that are important to our country and to our constituents. We shouldn't take hostages because of the weakness of our ideas. We should go confidently to the table of policymaking to debate them, but to say we're going to shut down government unless you overturn the law of the land--that has been upheld by the Supreme Court and validated by the last election--we are going to shut down the government.

Now, the decision that they made the other night--baying night-- they're continuing today, attempting to put on the floor a resolution that has no possibility of becoming the law.

We as Democrats say, you have put forth two really unpleasant proposals; one, to overturn the Affordable Care Act; and the other is hiding the terrible budget bill that they are putting forth, which even their own chairman says does not enable government to function, does not even enable us to do the job that we're here to do for the American people.

Two ``noes'' do not make a ``yes.'' Two ``noes'' make matters worse. Democrats are absolutely, totally opposed and determined that we will not shut government down. We will not be party to shutting government down, and so we're willing to take your budget figure, with the accompanying 6-week opportunity to go to the negotiating table, and develop a bill that will get rid of sequestration and all the harm that that does to our national security and to our investments in the future. Take ``yes'' for an answer.

This debate is about the budget. Keeping government open is about passing a bill, a continuing resolution to do that. Don't be insecure about your own ideas and say the only way we can prevail is if we threaten to shut government down if we don't have our own way--if we don't have our own way, we're going to shut government down. You and that attitude are a luxury this country cannot afford.

So again I say, this is an explicit offer to the Republicans in the Congress to agree to your number in this legislation and take the next weeks ahead to come to the table and negotiate--something we should have done 6 months ago. In March, the Republicans said they wanted regular order. Regular order means you pass a bill in the House and a bill in the Senate, and you go to conference--at least that's what the book says. That's what regular order is. The Republicans wanted regular order. That's what they told the President of the United States in the Oval Office. How would you like to proceed, the President said. We want regular order, said Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell.

The House passed its budget bill. Republicans started saying things like ``no budget, no pay'' to the Senate, the taunt. The Senate had planned to--and did--pass its budget bill. That would be the regular order. Now we go to the table to reconcile our differences.

The minute the Senate passed its bill, the Republicans abandoned any interest in the regular order. Why? Maybe they were afraid that people would see the contrast of what they want to do in their budget compared to the investment in the future, the statement of our national values that our Democratic proposal had under Chairwoman Patty Murray in the Senate and Chris Van Hollen in the House.

Whatever the reason, for 6 months they have not wanted to negotiate, and for 6 months they were saying the President doesn't want to negotiate. But they are the ones who have the responsibility, under the regular order of the House, to come to the budget table to reconcile our differences.

I salute the President for saying that the full faith and credit of the United States is not negotiable. We will not default on the debts that we have all incurred already.

That is over here. So when he says that's not negotiable, that doesn't mean that we won't negotiate on the budget which is in the form of a continuing resolution, a separate issue.

You can only conclude that ``insecure'' because of the poverty of ideas or ``just determined to shut down government,'' maybe because they don't fully understand the consequences of it.

The Republicans have once again come to the floor with a bill which they know will shut down government. 5\1/2\ hours from now--5\1/2\ hours from now--we either bay to the Moon again or we'll make the right decision to take ``yes'' for an answer, we agree to your number for the purpose of going to the negotiating table.

Our number is what we agreed to with you in the Budget Control Act, a

bipartisan agreement--$1.58 trillion versus $986 billion. That's an $80 billion comedown. That number was a comprise to begin with. That wasn't like plush with spending. It was a comprise to begin with. Now we are underfunding government; and that's not good enough for you, to underfund in meeting the needs of the American people. You want to shut down government.

I would hope that all who think this is not a good idea will express themselves on the rule, because the rule does not allow us to have a vote, a clean vote, on your suggestion for a continuing resolution at $986 billion. Let's give the Republicans a vote on their number. Let's give the Republicans a vote on their proposal, and let's do it in a way that is clean and does not place in doubt whether government will be open in the morning to meet the needs of the American people.

I hope that in the previous question enough people will reject what the Republicans are putting forth, and certainly on the rule we can do that. Otherwise, we'll go time and time again--46 times--to vote against undermining the Affordable Care Act. Instead, we could have passed an immigration bill. We could have passed a bill to make sure we had background checks for people who are legally able to purchase guns to make sure that they are. God willing, we could have passed legislation creating jobs, investing in the future for our country.

But all of those things can be the legitimate--not all, but the stuff about the job initiatives and investing in the future are the legitimate debate of priorities that is the budget debate. That is what I hope the Republicans will allow: something they asked for--the regular order; something they asked for--$986 billion in the bill; something I think we all want--keeping government open.

With that, I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

I thank the chairman for the recognition.

Mr. Speaker, I felt obligated to come to the floor tonight to try to set a few things straight. All the words that have been spoken about the amendment from the Senator from Iowa that was in the original Affordable Care Act that was signed by the President in March of 2010, but like so many things that were in the bill that was signed by the President, there were errors. It really wasn't ready for prime time. It was hastily pushed through the Senate, never went through any sort of process in the House after that point, and then got signed into law.

As a consequence--and Senator Grassley has been concerned about this, and he spoke just last week--he said that the original amendment required lawmakers and staffers to enter the ObamaCare exchanges, but he didn't intend for them to lose the employer subsidy. And he said it's frustrating. It's frustrating because if they had let those of us who knew anything about health care draft this amendment, we wouldn't have the controversy.

The Senator said that the Democratic majority leader did not properly draft the statutory language for his amendment, omitting language that would have allowed the staff to keep their employer contributions while in the exchanges. He said repeatedly that the Office of Personnel Management rule was in line with the original intent of the amendment, despite the amendment not being his.

And then Senator Grassley went on to say: You understand that when we adopt an amendment in the Senate Finance Committee, unlike other committees, it's not in legal language. We describe it, but then it went to the majority leader's office, and when they put the statutory language in, they screwed it up.

He said: If you want to know the truth, they had people who didn't know what they were doing. I don't know what their intent was, the Senator continued. My goal, regardless of how the amendment was worded, was that we in Congress need to go into the exchange so we'd have to go through the same red tape as every other citizen.

And that's really what we're doing here tonight, saying that that concept, that Members of Congress go through that same red tape as every other citizen in this country is required to do.

Now, we can talk about things that have been delayed in this bill. Maybe we should spend a few minutes talking about that.

Republicans have tried to short-circuit parts of the Affordable Care Act, but it's actually been the President himself who's been the delayer in chief. Many people forget that there was a Federal preexisting program set up under the Affordable Care Act, but that preexisting program closed its doors to new applicants the 1st of February of this year.

That means for 11 months people are frozen out of the Federal preexisting program. The press has never held the President to account for that.

We heard comments as this debate started off about the caps on out- of-pocket expenses. But, Mr. Speaker, did you realize that those caps on out-of-pocket expenses were in fact suspended by the administration earlier this year? There was very little press about that.

So all of the heralding of good things in the Affordable Care Act, you don't know what it's going to contain when it finally kicks in because the President may stop any part of it, at his discretion.

I thank my chairman for yielding me the time. I thank him for his leadership in the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, we've been here night after night after night, I say to my chairman, trying to keep the government open. And to my colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle, we have an opportunity to work together.

I'm a hardcore, right-wing Georgia Republican, and I'm here to tell you I want to keep the government open. And I don't think there's one of you over there who questions my word that I'm here today to keep the government open, not to bring the government to a halt.

But there are also other concerns. And the biggest frustration I've had, Mr. Speaker, in my 2\1/2\ years here in the House is that the President doesn't want to talk with me and my 700,000 constituents about our priorities for America.

I carry a copy of the Constitution in my pocket, Mr. Speaker, and it lays out clearly our bicameral system here in Congress: our article I, the Congress; our article II, the White House; and our article III, the courts.

The President has been saying over and over and over again as we come upon this brink of a government shutdown, I will not negotiate. Over and over again, Mr. Speaker. I will not negotiate.

So often it's so easy for my friends to characterize Republicans as being folks who are just looking for a fight. I've been down here with my Republican colleagues as they have passed a bill to fund the government and completely repeal ObamaCare. I've been down here with my Republican colleagues when they came back and they passed a bill to fund the government but just delay the most troublesome parts for a year. And now I'm back down here again with my Republican colleagues with a bill that will fund the government but simply prevent the individual mandate from compelling individuals to engage in behavior they didn't want to engage in and to ensure that all Americans have access to the same set of rules that are applying to Congress. I don't know how to be any more fair than that.

Harry Reid said, We don't need to have any more conversations. Folks, we have more serious problems than keeping the government open if the rule book for how this place is to operate no longer means anything.

Mr. Speaker, if the President just gets to decide how it's going to be and that's going to be the way America runs, we no longer have a constitutional Republic. We have something very, very different.

We're here on the floor today to keep the government open. We're here on the floor today to continue to try to negotiate.

I'm very proud of what my chairman has done in the Rules Committee in terms of bringing us together and trying to build a program that unites people rather than divides people. You have to be seeing the same headlines I'm seeing. Delta Air Lines is dropping employees, Home Depot is dropping employees, UPS is dropping, Kroger is dropping employees. You have to be seeing that. And it has to hurt you in the same way it hurts me.

Let's come together and solve that problem. This is a step in that direction. There is much more negotiation to be done, and I hope we'll do it over the next few weeks.

Support this rule, support this bill.