Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 280 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 have a confession to make to you. In fact, I have two confessions to make.

The first is I have got a big group up in the Rules Committee right now. It is my Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce. It is an amazing county, tremendous diversity, tremendous record of success in solving problems. They have been up there visiting with leaders all day long.

I first met with them this morning while Mr. McGovern was down here on the floor during 5 minutes. I said: Well, this is a 5-minute time. You can step right through the doors there, if you would like to see it.

They said: Who is on the floor?

I said: Well, it is this fellow right here. His name tag is there in the Rules Committee. He is down there, #endhunger.

I said: The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) and I can disagree on all sorts of issues, all sorts of public policy, but there is nobody in this institution who has a heart for service on the issue of hunger more than Jim McGovern does.

I said: Here he is. He is representing Massachusetts, of all places, and he has chosen to serve on the Agriculture Committee. If you are a Georgian, you serve on the Agriculture Committee because you grow cotton and peanuts and row crop after row crop after row crop. When you are from Massachusetts and you sit on the Agriculture Committee, you want to end childhood hunger, you want to feed people.

I tell you that as a confession, Mr. Speaker, because I am not going to confess to sharing my admiration for Jim McGovern all that often on the House floor, but I was with folks up there today who really do commit themselves to making a difference in our county. It was nice to have a colleague on the floor--again, with whom I disagree about much-- who was putting everything he had, as he does every day, into an issue that he cares a lot about.

That is all my constituents back home want, Mr. Speaker, is to believe that we have sincere, earnest folks working on sincere and difficult issues. So I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for that.

My second confession, Mr. Speaker, is that ordinarily I really enjoy listening to the Reading Clerk read the rule. It gets me all wound up about how the process is. Of course, today she was talking about all the amendments we are going to make in order. We are making every single amendment offered by both sides of the aisle in order on this underlying bill.

I found myself thinking back to the days when I was a young man and I came up here with my class. I was sitting up here in the gallery, and I walked into the floor at a time when the Reading Clerk was just standing up there reading. There was no cheat sheet that they give you in the gallery, Mr. Speaker. You don't have any idea whether they are going to read for 20 seconds or 20 minutes. For all you know, they are going to read for the rest of the afternoon, and it was hard to follow.

I get a cheat sheet here that my staff gives me before each rule. I didn't enjoy it as much today as I ordinarily do, Mr. Speaker, because there is a lot of procedural work in this rule.

We are coming up on a bunch of big deadlines. So there is the ability to bring up suspensions. These are commonsense bills that two-thirds of the House agree on. You can bring those up at any time. That provision is made in this rule.

There is the ability to bring things up the same day. If the Rules Committee goes up and passes a new rule, we can bring that bill to the floor immediately. Ordinarily that would lay over for 24 hours. But because there are so many things we are trying to get done, we waived that.

All of those procedural issues, Mr. Speaker, get in the way of my favorite part of the rule, which is that every single Member of this body had a chance to come up to the Rules Committee, offer their ideas for how we can make this bill better, and the Rules Committee made every single one of them in order. Let me tell you more about that.

This House Resolution 280, Mr. Speaker, is the structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 1694. If you happen to tune into our Rules Committee web feed, Mr. Speaker, you can see it at rules.house.gov if you are not able to get up there with us as we meet sometimes late at night.

This House Resolution 280 is for the consideration of H.R. 1694, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017. Now, folks know a lot about open records, Mr. Speaker. It is that procedure--it is called FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act--where any member of the United States community board of directors--that would be any United States citizen--can write and say: this is my government, and I want some information about what is going on. That has been a very fundamental part of who we are as a people for as long as you and I have been alive.

What is unusual, though, is the way the Federal Government has gotten involved in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the tune of about $187 billion--billion with a B, Mr. Speaker. The American taxpayer bailed out these two private institutions making the American taxpayer, making the U.S. Government the largest shareholder in both of these institutions.

So we found ourselves in a unique situation of having the American taxpayers in charge of an institution with no ability, through the Freedom of Information Act, to request information from that entity. It just hadn't come up that often. Thank goodness we haven't had to bail out folks that way in the past.

Mr. Speaker, these entities that Fannie and Freddie are a part--we called them government-sponsored enterprises--they just haven't historically been the subject of that kind of taxpayer scrutiny, but times are changing.

This bill, Mr. Speaker, went through the regular order process. Hearings were held. Markups were held. It came out of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. If you have not looked into government reform, Mr. Speaker, it is not often that the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is moving unanimous legislation.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is a tough committee to serve on. I served there in my first term here, Mr. Speaker. It is the hardest things about our government, how we hold each other accountable. Of course, where you stand sometimes depends on where you sit here. If you sit on the left or you sit on the right, you might feel differently about government reform and accountability.

This bill passed out of this committee on a voice vote, Mr. Speaker. The most collaborative of efforts moved this bill to the floor.

Then when we got it in the Rules Committee, we had several Members say: I think we can make this bill better. I think we can make this bill even better.

These were Members who may not have had a chance to fix those issues on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Again, as I said, we made all amendments in order from both sides of the aisle. I believe that totals three today, Mr. Speaker. But the take-home message for me is, if you had an idea about how to fix this bill, the folks in the Rules Committee made that opportunity available to you.

Mr. Speaker, we can't do the big things every single day of the week. Every piece of legislation we pass, unless we stuff everything into it, can't do everything for everyone. Candidly, I am opposed to stuffing everything into a piece of legislation. I am glad when we have an opportunity to move one issue, one subject, one topic at a time and deliver on behalf of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, this structured rule, House Resolution 280, is a good bill. It

is a good resolution that, if passed, will provide for the consideration of the underlying legislation, H.R. 1694, which, if passed, will provide the American taxpayer, for the first time, the accountability that they deserve for the $187 billion in taxpayer support that Fannie and Freddie have received. I am proud to be associated with that.

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

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

I would tell my friend that I think this is exactly the right way to be moving legislation, and I am proud that we are doing it. Big bills are hard and big

bills are sloppy. Can we do better on big bills? Of course we can. Of course we can.

But you and I have been on the Rules Committee together, Mr. Speaker. The Rules Committee process, you have seen it happen. If I am down here talking about a small bill that everybody agrees on, folks want to know why it is we are not doing something bigger. And when I bring a big bill down here tomorrow, folks are going to want to know why I have rushed it to the floor and we are not doing something that has more bipartisan agreement on it instead.

These issues are hard, and that is why they have sent serious men and women here to try to solve them. I want to do everything that my friend from Massachusetts has talked about, Mr. Speaker. I want to see a healthcare bill go across the floor. I want to see a full-year funding bill go across the floor. Shoot, I don't stop there. I want to see the budget go across the floor. I want to see a transportation and infrastructure bill go across the floor. I have got a tax bill I want to see go across the floor. The list is long.

And while my friend from Massachusetts and I are down here working on this, I have got 433 other colleagues out there working on that, and my great hope is that we are going to deliver on those things in the very near future, too.

But today, Mr. Speaker, today isn't a day for recriminations. Today is a day for celebrations, in that what we have here is a bill that we have worked through the regular order process.

You are not going to hear one person, Mr. Speaker, not one, come down to the floor and say this bill wasn't moved through the process in the right way. You are not going to hear one person come down to the floor and say their voice was silenced on this bill. You are not going to hear one person come down to the floor and say their input was turned away on this bill.

We do so much that we wish we could do better, Mr. Speaker. When we have these opportunities to celebrate those things we are doing right, I sometimes wish we would take a little more time to focus on our successes. There will always be time to turn our attention back to our failures.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle that they had me at hello. When they said this was a great bill underlying this resolution and they didn't see any controversy, they thought we ought to pass this and they thought this was a good step forward for the American people, yet you had me. I would like to do that.

I remember, Mr. Speaker, a friend of mine, his name was Jay Pierson. He served in this institution for over four decades. His job was not to be particularly partisan one way or the other. His job was to make sure this place functioned. I wonder what goes on over the 40 years of changes in the way that we treat each other on the House floor and the way that we work with each other on the House floor.

My friends have a perfectly legitimate concern. In fact, they brought it up as a privileged resolution already this year. It has been tabled. I recognize that my friends and I have disagreements--vast disagreements--in numerous areas of public policy, but today we have a chance to talk about one of the agreements that we have. I wonder, Mr. Speaker, what folks back home watching think. Do they think, just like the media loves to report, that, golly, those guys can't even agree on what time to start in the morning?

For Pete's sake, we have worked a bill through the process, just like we learned about in civics class. Don't make me sing ``I'm just a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill,'' Mr. Speaker, because that is exactly the process that we all want bills to go through, and we have done that here today.

We can't even take a moment to talk about how successfully we have worked together, not even a moment to talk about how the process worked, not even a moment to talk about how we delivered for folks. We have to shift gears to something that is not even the topic of the bill today. We will have time to talk about every controversy we want. If folks want to go fisticuffs with one another, I am certain we will make time for that, but right now we have a chance to talk about those things that unite us.

In the spirit of dispelling those myths, Mr. Speaker, dispelling those

myths that things don't get done around here, dispelling those myths that we don't respect each other, and dispelling those myths that we can't work together, I want to dispel the myth that what this underlying rule does is it provides Republicans with a pathway for doing whatever it is they want to do whenever it is they want to do it, because that doesn't really sound like fair play. I wouldn't want to support such a bill either.

What this rule does do is, contrary to the rules, allow us to bring up suspension bills at any time. Now, what a suspension bill is, Mr. Speaker, as you know, it is a bill that can pass not with a simple majority, but with a two-thirds majority. So this rule says, forbid the thought, should bipartisanship break out in the next 72 hours, you all should be able to bring those bills to the floor and deliver it for the American people.

Well, dag gum it, I support that. I don't look at that as a way of Republicans to manipulate the system. I look at it as a way for the United States Congress to deliver on behalf of the system, and I am glad we are doing it.

Number two, the bill says, if the Rules Committee, in its wisdom, passes a rule to bring a bill to the floor rather than have that bill lay over for a night, you can bring that bill to the floor directly. So my friend is absolutely right when he says that passing this rule would allow us to rush legislation to the floor. It would rush that commonsense, bipartisan legislation that two-thirds of us would agree on, we can rush those results across the finish line for the American people; and, if the Rules Committee acts and we pass that rule on the floor of the House, it will allow us to consider the legislation that that rule would bring to the floor on the same day instead of waiting 24 hours.

Now, what my friend says about having an opportunity to read the bills is critically important--critically important. I want to point out because, again, folks have so many concerns about what goes on in this institution, I got lots of things I can gripe about, but when we are getting it right, I want to make sure that we are telling folks that we are getting it right.

This tradition of self-flagellation in this institution drives me crazy because, when we tear ourselves down, Mr. Speaker, it is not us who bears the cost of that. It is our constituents. It is the board of directors of the United States of America. It is the folks who come beyond us.

We have a responsibility to lead this institution, and when we are doing it right, we ought to tell the American people that we are doing it right. For example, there might be a healthcare vote that comes to the floor of this House in the next 24, 48 hours. I don't want to get my expectations high for that, Mr. Speaker, but I sure would be enthusiastic if that happened. If that were to happen, my friend is exactly right: we will go to the Rules Committee; we will pass a rule; we will bring it to the floor; and we will bring it up the same day. But the language was posted yesterday, and the vote wouldn't happen until tomorrow. So when folks say let's leave the language out there for folks to have a chance to read it, let's not rush something through, we have got 3 days built into the system.

That is not a rule of the House. I want to make that clear. There is no rule in this institution that says you have got to present a bill before you can pass a bill to read it and find out what is in it. This is not a rule of this House. It is a policy of ours. It is a policy of who we are and of let's do this; let's make this our commitment to make this happen. Mr. Speaker, it does not always happen, but most of the time it does. I celebrate that success.

Again, thinking about those things that unite us instead of divide us, I just listened to my friend, Ms. Clark of Massachusetts, make an incredibly eloquent plea for her bill. She said, if we defeat the previous question--that vote is coming up very soon--we will take up her piece of legislation, which was just handed to me about 3\1/2\ minutes ago.

Mr. Speaker, I get it that sometimes people think that they have such urgent ideas that those ideas need to come to the floor in a hurry. I will settle for either outcome: that it is okay that we bring ideas to the floor in a hurry and that it is okay if you hand somebody a bill 3\1/2\ minutes ago and tell them you want to bring it to the floor 30 minutes from now. If that is okay, then let that be okay. If what we need is for bills to lay overnight, then let that be okay.

We have a process here that is built on mutual respect, that is built on years of tradition that men and women paid a tremendous price for, that they provided tremendous leadership for. In the name of short-term political gains, I want to make sure that we don't tear down those long-term policy successes.

This institution should be a source of pride for the American people. I don't believe that it is today. The responsibility of making it that source of pride falls on you and me. We are the only ones who can get that job done. We have an opportunity today to do just a little bit of that, and I hope we take advantage of that.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I heard a group of constituents ask one of our freshman Members what they found to be the most surprising part of this institution, having served here for about 100 days, and it was with no small amount of joy that they gave exactly the same answer that I would have given after my first 100 days. They said to their constituents: What really surprised me is how earnest, hardworking, conscientious, dedicated, and how committed each and every Member of this institution is.

There are a couple of bad apples that don't follow under that perspective, but, by and large, the surprise when you get elected to Congress is about the high quality of the people who you get to work with, the commitment of the people you get to work with, the conviction of the people who you get to work with.

What you have heard from my friend from Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, is 100 percent authentic. There is no one down here playing for the cameras today. I could make a powerful case that while cameras provide a great deal of sunlight, they create a great deal of unnecessary heat, as well. Folks sometimes are performing for cameras in this institution, but not my friend from Massachusetts.

What you heard from my friend from Massachusetts was absolutely sincere concern about public policy. I agree with him. I believe we should have an open and deliberative process in this institution.

You and I and my friend from Massachusetts don't work for the leadership. The leadership works for us. There is not one Member of the leadership team who votes for me. I vote for them.

We have an opportunity to direct the way this institution is led. Candidly, I couldn't be more proud than I am of the way that Paul Ryan leads this institution. He is not the Republican Speaker. We have a Republican leader. The Democrats have a Democratic leader. Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House. I am incredibly proud of the way he leads this institution.

The way to make it even better, Mr. Speaker, is not to cite every single thing that we do as a failure. It is just not so. Let's find those things that we do that we can do better, and let's identify them and work together, but let's celebrate those successes.

For example, my friend pointed to the number of closed rules that have come to the floor. For folks who don't follow the process closely, a closed rule means there were no amendments allowed.

Well, many of those bills, Mr. Speaker, were bills that the Rules Committee sent out an email to all of Capitol Hill and said: We are bringing this piece of legislation to the floor. Here it is for you to read it and digest it. And if you have any ideas about how to make this bill better, you send them to us, and we will take a look.

When we did that, Mr. Speaker, not one single idea came back from the Republican or the Democratic side of the aisle for improving the bill.

So, yes, the bill came to the floor. The rule was closed not because we are trying to silence the minority, not because we are trying to silence elements of the majority, but because we had a completely open process, and it turned out that regular order got it right the first time. We don't need to identify that as a failure. That is an unmitigated success.

Some of those closed rules, Mr. Speaker, came because we were bringing legislation under the Congressional Review Act. Now, for folks who don't know the Congressional Review Act, that is that act that was passed so that Congress could go back and review regulations that had been passed by the administration to make sure those regulations followed congressional intent.

By definition, those bills have to be narrow and targeted. We can't have an amendment about healthcare legislation added to our waters of the U.S. Congressional Review Act bill. We can't have folks go and add a pay raise for our military men and women to that Congressional Review Act bill. We want a pay raise for our men and women in uniform. We passed it out of the House. It is sitting in the United States Senate, but it can't be on a CRA piece of legislation. So, yes, every single one of those bills came to the floor under a closed rule not because someone was trying to silence the minority, not because someone wanted to silence elements of the majority, but because that is the process that we have to work through together, and, by golly, we are doing it right.

My friend from Massachusetts talked about what has gone on in this body. I will tell you, this body has moved more legislation to the President's desk for his signature in these first 100 days than any President since Truman. We have had Republicans running the show, we have had Democrats running the show, but it is only when we collaboratively have been running the show that we have moved more bills to the President's desk than any other Congress in modern American history. I am proud of that. Some of those votes went my way, some of those votes didn't go my way, but we worked each one of those through the process, and we did each one of those things together.

Mr. Speaker, I would love to tell you what is going to happen over the next 18 months. I have no idea. But I know that to the extent that this body is full of accusations, to the extent that this body is full of mistrust, to the extent that this body is full of frustration and condemnation, we are going to go down one path.

To the extent that this body isn't afraid to tell folks back home when we are working hard together, to the extent that this body isn't ashamed that we rolled up our sleeves together and got some things done that folks thought we wouldn't be able to get done, to the extent that this body isn't afraid to confront the fact that we are always going to have disagreements, but from time to time bipartisanship breaks out and bills move a little more quickly than they do at other times. If folks are willing to accept our successes with the same zeal that they celebrate our failures, Mr. Speaker, I tell you, we are going to create a different institution over these next 18 months. Again, not under Democratic leadership, not under Republican leadership, but under Paul Ryan's leadership as Speaker of this entire House of Representatives.

We have one such opportunity today. I encourage folks to go to the web page of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. I believe it is oversight.house.gov. Those folks are working on some of the toughest issues in this town, and often they are bitterly divided along partisan lines. They are working on those issues that tend to separate Americans rather than unite them. They have sent us a bill today that was so widely supported, it passed by a voice vote unanimously out of that committee. It then went to the Committee on Rules, where every single Member of Congress was invited to improve it. Three Members of Congress took us up on the invitation, and every single one of their amendments was made in order by this rule.

Mr. Speaker, we have lots of things that are going to bring my friend from Massachusetts and I back down to this floor, and we are going to disagree heartily about those. Today we have an example of something that brings us together. I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this rule that brings our OGR unanimously passed bill to the floor, and vote ``yes'' on that underlying bill, just as our Republican and Democratic colleagues on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform did.

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of challenges ahead of us. This is one we can put in the books as a success for our constituents back home. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), my friend, for the customary 30 minutes.

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

Mr. Speaker, I first want to begin by thanking the gentleman for his kind words to his constituents about me on the floor. It means a lot to me, and I appreciate it.

I should tell him, however, that, even though sometimes people don't realize this, Massachusetts has a robust agricultural base, and, in fact, in my district, I have 1,832 farms on over 142,899 acres, compared to the gentleman who has 209 farms on 13,328 acres. So, in addition to fighting hunger, I am on the Agriculture Committee to represent my farms.

I do genuinely appreciate the gentleman's kind words, but then I look at the rule that we are debating today and it kind of spoils the mood.

Having said that, I just want to say to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that here we are again, just 1 day from our government running out of funding and confronting yet another manufactured, totally avoidable crisis, and instead of working on a bill to fully fund America's biggest priorities, we are back on the floor with--the only way I can characterize this--more filler legislation. It seems my Republican friends care more about looking busy than actually doing their jobs.

This rule provides for the consideration of H.R. 1694, as my colleague mentioned, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017. It is a fine bill designed to strengthen transparency at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I support the legislation. My Democratic colleagues support the legislation. The Republican majority supports the legislation. In fact, I haven't found one person yet who doesn't support the bill.

Freedom of information is a good thing, Mr. Speaker, and I support FOIA, but what about the freedom from the threat of a government shutdown?

What about freedom from the threat of a default on our national debt?

What about freedom to know what our President's conflicts of interest are and to see his tax returns?

What about the freedom from having our healthcare protections ripped away, protections like essential health benefits and protections for people with preexisting conditions?

And what about the freedom to know what Congressional Republicans and the White House are doing to our healthcare system behind closed doors?

None of this seems to matter.

But the most troubling part of this rule is that it declares blanket martial law, through Saturday, that allows Republicans to bring anything--and I mean anything--to the floor between now and then.

Now, I understand the importance of rushing something to the floor when the government is about to run out of money; although, I would point out that we are 7 months into the fiscal year and my Republican friends set this deadline themselves back in December, so there is absolutely no excuse for Congress to come within hours of yet another shutdown. But this is just the latest example of Republican obstruction, obfuscation, and incompetence that has, once again, brought us to the edge of the cliff. And, Mr. Speaker, this is no way to govern.

This rule would allow Republican leadership to rush anything to the floor within hours of it being released. Not just appropriations, it gives them blanket authority to jam us with whatever new disaster they cook up with the White House in the backroom of Capitol Hill, and that includes this latest healthcare deal that I have heard so much about this week.

Of course, with it being a backroom deal, we were relying on news reports all week to clue us in to these terrible new provisions; and it was only last night, around midnight, when the Republicans finally posted their newest healthcare proposal that we were able to confirm just how bad it really is.

Incredibly, this new amendment will make the bill even worse than before. Honest to God, Mr. Speaker, I didn't know that was possible.

In addition to killing the requirement to provide basic, crucial, essential benefits like maternity care and prescription drugs and emergency services, this new amendment will also completely gut protections for people with preexisting conditions. In fact, this amendment directly violates the commitment made by President Trump and House Republicans to protect those with preexisting conditions.

This newest proposal will allow insurers to charge an unlimited ``age tax'' to older Americans, and, to make matters even worse, Republicans have set up a system that would allow women to once again be charged more than men for health coverage. It will bring us back to those bad old days when insurance companies could charge women more because they said being a woman was a preexisting condition.

Give me a break.

All of this, on top of a disaster of a healthcare bill that will cause 24 million Americans to lose their healthcare coverage. And in addition, their bill would cut Medicaid by close to $1 trillion, and take that $1 trillion and give it, in the form of tax breaks, to the wealthiest individuals in the country.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the way we should be running this House. All of this is being done to appease the most conservative fringes within the Republican Conference in an attempt to deliver, I guess, a political ``win'' to Donald Trump so he can celebrate 100 days in office. It doesn't matter what the details are, he just wants to be able to tout a victory of some sort.

Well, this is not a victory for the American people. This would be a disaster for the American people.

It is no wonder that my Republican colleagues have been overwhelmed by angry calls from their constituents at home demanding that they oppose this reckless and heartless bill. As one Republican remarked: ``I spent the whole work period hearing from people pissed about preexisting conditions. This isn't helpful.'' That is one of my Republican colleagues.

Now, under this rule, these dangerous backroom deals could be rushed to the floor without any proper deliberations, but they will have a very real, very serious, and very dangerous consequence for millions of Americans. Real lives are at stake here.

Now, I can't help but also note that this newest amendment exempts Congress from the terrible impacts of this proposal. Can you believe that? Knowing just how damaging these new provisions are, Republicans wanted to keep healthcare protections for themselves but set up another system for their constituents.

Now, it was only after the press caught Republicans with their hands in the cookie jar that they introduced yet another bill to unexempt themselves. But the new bill to unexempt Congress would require a 60- vote supermajority in the Senate. What are the odds that is going to happen, Mr. Speaker?

Are we seriously supposed to trust that they won't exempt themselves from this terrible plan, to trust that the Senate can muster 60 votes to pass this provision or anything else?

Let me be clear: this maneuver is a procedural sleight of hand. This is legislative smoke and mirrors designed to give Republicans, who tried to pull a fast one and got caught, a talking point.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans wrote this bill, so change the damn bill. Don't just say: ``Trust us. We will pass another bill to fix the fix, and we will get the Senate not to make any changes. Oh, while we are at it, we will get a supermajority in the Senate to support it.'' Who do you think you are fooling, Mr. Speaker?

I urge all my colleagues to defeat this martial law rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would just say to my colleague, I don't have any problem with the underlying bill, but I would argue with him that I think most of our colleagues probably don't know what the hell we are doing here because, in the scheme of things, this is not terribly consequential. I think our problem is the fact that we are at the edge of another crisis where, if we don't fund the government by tomorrow, we shut this place down, we shut the government down, and that has an impact on the American people.

I think what our objection is is that the rule that you bring to us here today to consider the underlying bill also allows my Republican friends to bring up anything they want between now and Saturday, including, you know, an awful healthcare repeal bill.

And by the way, when we talk about regular order, it would be nice, especially when it comes to the big things like health care, that we actually do things like hearings and listen to what experts have to say and our constituents and patients and doctors, I mean, a whole bunch of people who have a stake in our healthcare system.

The bill that my friends brought to the floor, that they had to pull, never had a single hearing and, in all likelihood, whatever monstrosity they bring to the floor in the future will probably not be the result of regular order. It will be the result of a backroom deal where very few people have any input.

So I can't celebrate today. I am very concerned for my constituents. I am very concerned for the millions of people who might lose their health care. I am concerned for this country.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump's first 100 days have been embroiled in controversy and shrouded in secrecy. The American people deserve a heck of a lot better. They deserve transparency from their government. They deserve to know which special interests are getting face time with the President and his top aides and whether the White House is being used to personally enrich President Trump and his family.

It is our duty, as the people's Representatives, to hold this administration accountable, an administration that has so many conflicts of interest, financial conflicts of interest, that it is on a collision course with corruption. So, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Katherine Clark's resolution, H. Res. 286, which would force the White House to release information to us regarding the President's many potential conflicts of interest, including his tax returns, involvement in his business empire, and White House and Mar-a- Lago visitor logs.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 12 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Katherine Clark) to discuss our proposal.

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

Let me say to the gentleman from Georgia: he had me at hello, too. If all he said was ``hello'' and introduced the underlying bill, we would be done. There would be no controversy. The underlying bill is being brought to the floor under a rule that is atrocious and that, quite frankly, every Member of this House should be ashamed about. Under this martial law rule, you can bring anything up at any time you want, at a moment's notice, without people having an opportunity to actually understand what they are going to vote on.

The gentleman talked about they might bring up the healthcare bill between now and Saturday. He said: Yesterday, we posted the text of our new amendment. He used the word ``yesterday'' loosely. They posted it at midnight last night. I was asleep at midnight; I don't know about the gentleman.

The bottom line is, there is nothing that says that they can't change the text again and again and again and again, offer more amendments, because that is what they have been doing since they first began their effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

On something as important as health care, on something that could affect millions and millions of people in this country, that could throw 24 million people off of health care, that will cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars, that will compromise Medicare, that will take away essential benefits, people ought to know what the heck they are voting on.

We ought to have regular order on these major pieces of legislation. Why is that so controversial? How about a hearing on health care? The idea that we would like the opportunity to know what we are voting on, to do this in a thoughtful way, is so offensive to my Republican colleagues. I am flabbergasted by this--to basically defend this process.

We have to use a procedural motion to be able to try to force a debate or bring to the floor the bill of my colleague, Katherine Clark, which basically calls on the President to release his tax returns and calls for some transparency with regard to visitor logs at the White House and Mar-a-Lago. We have to resort to a procedural motion because the Republican majority basically blocks us from bringing anything to the floor under a normal process.

The Rules Committee has become a place where democracy goes to die. Yet the bill that we have before us, the underlying bill that we are going to consider later today, could probably pass on a suspension.

By the way, we have no problem with giving you same-day authority on suspension bills. Those aren't controversial. We don't even have a problem, although you should have prepared for this, with you being able to bring a bill to the floor quickly to keep the government running.

It is the broad authority that you have given yourselves to bring anything at a moment's notice, without anybody having a chance to review it. That is what we have a problem with. Quite frankly, my Republican colleagues ought to have a problem with that, too.

Mr. Speaker, shortly after taking the gavel, Speaker Ryan said: ``I want to

have a process that is more open, more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory, and that is what we are trying to do.'' That was the Speaker of the House.

Unfortunately, Republicans do not appear to be trying very hard. The current Congress is on track to become the most closed in history, with an incredible 26 closed rules in this year's first quarter out of 42 total rules. The Republican majority shut out all amendments from both Democrats and Republicans on fully 62 percent of the legislation considered by the House under a rule.

Do Members realize that? On most bills, even they are not allowed to offer amendments. No amendments at all. Under a closed rule, you can't even offer an amendment to fix a typo.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to ask my colleagues to take a look at this chart. This shows closed rules in the past decade and for the first quarter of the year.

Do you see this really long red line on the top? I am happy to bring it over to my colleagues here. If you see that line, you will see that the bottom line is that this shows that this Congress has an abysmal record with regard to an open, fair process.

When we were in charge from 2007-2010, we averaged only 8 closed rules in the same timeframe. This Congress is more than three times as closed. We have 26 closed rules in the first quarter alone; that is not to mention zero open rules. You are even crushing your record for 2015, the year that you beat the all-time closed rule record. This is not something to be proud of.

What has this historically closed process brought to the House? Complete chaos. Virtually no legislative accomplishments. A lousy process usually leads to lousy legislation. We learned that from your awful, disastrous attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

By the way, I should point out that while we were meeting here today--I guess some of the advocacy organizations had a chance to read the language you posted last night at midnight--so far, the American Hospital Association, AARP, the American Medical Association, March of Dimes, and America's Essential Hospitals have all come out against this terrible, new Republican health proposal. In fact, the American Hospital Association said: ``The amendment proposed this week would dramatically worsen the bill.''

I would just say to my colleagues: We don't have a problem with suspensions. We don't have a problem with a rule that will allow us to keep the government running. We have a problem with your closed, authoritarian approach to the legislation. We have a problem with the prospect that you might bring a healthcare bill to the floor that will impact millions and millions of Americans, and nobody will have read it, nobody will even have any guarantee that what you posted last night at midnight will even be what we are voting on.

This is a big deal. It affects my constituents and it affects your constituents. We ought to be doing a better job around here, and this process, quite frankly, stinks.

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

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

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

Simply, again, I reiterate that everybody in this House, Democrats and Republicans alike, should be ashamed at the way this House is being run. The American people who are watching should be appalled by the way this House is being run.

I don't care whether you are a liberal or conservative or fall somewhere in the middle. You ought to have some confidence that what the people's House is doing is actually thoughtful and is actually in the best interest of the people of this country. That is not what is happening here.

Yes, the underlying bill that we are going to talk about later today, we have no problem with it. It could have passed overwhelmingly under a suspension vote. I am happy to support it. No problem.

I have no problem, by the way, with bringing up suspensions to fill up time as we try to get a resolution to the continuing resolution. We have no problem, quite frankly, with bringing up a continuing resolution in a quick fashion.

This rule continues a lousy process that has been embraced by the current Republican leadership in this House. There is no excuse for this. When it comes to big bills, big legislation, like health care, which is a very personal thing to people in this country, the American people deserve much better than this.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote ``no'' on this lousy rule and stand up to your leadership and demand that they open this House up not only to Democratic amendments but to Republican amendments as well. This is a deliberative body. We ought to be able to deliberate.

On big issues like health care, it ought not be some backroom deal that a few people put together. We saw the result of those backroom deals with a lousy, terrible, awful bill that would hurt millions of Americans. We ought to do it out in the open.

Mr. Speaker, 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 have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1694.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 1694, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017.

Mr. Chairman, transparency is critical. It is critical to oversight and accountability of the Federal Government and how it spends taxpayer dollars. The American public has a right to know how their tax dollars are spent.

The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is a key tool for citizens to access information about their government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not subject to the requirements of FOIA, despite taxpayers' substantial investment into both entities and the government's implicit guaranteed backing of these entities.

Taxpayers have spent $187 billion to bail out Fannie and Freddie, the most sweeping government intervention into private financial markets in decades. Taxpayers are on the hook for $400 billion in lost investments and $5 trillion in mortgage liabilities.

At the same time, the American public is unable to seek accountability from these entities under FOIA. It is far past time we apply FOIA to Fannie and Freddie. There is precedent for applying FOIA to non-traditional quasi-governmental entities. Congress subjected Amtrak to FOIA in recognition of sizeable taxpayer funding.

To stabilize the housing market in the aftershock of the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Housing Finance Agency placed Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship to return them to financial viability and stockholder control. FHFA is a government entity subject to FOIA. Under the terms of its conservatorship over Fannie and Freddie, FHFA exercises the titles to their books and records, as well as the powers and privileges of Fannie and Freddie.

Despite this government intervention and explicit guarantee, taxpayers, however, are unable to obtain any information from Fannie and Freddie.

H.R. 1694, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017, sponsored by Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, will allow the American public to submit FOIA requests to Fannie and Freddie as long as the entities remain under FHFA's conservatorship. H.R. 1694 reflects FOIA's presumptions of openness, granting taxpayers information unless an exemption applies.

This bill is a commonsense measure to allow the American public access to basic information regarding entities that they fund with their tax dollars.

The American public should not be in the dark when it comes to what Fannie and Freddie are doing.

Mr. Chairman, I urge support for the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill).

Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Arkansas.

Mr. Chairman, as you can see, this is a bill that I think has broad bipartisan support. It is something that we need to do for the taxpayers who have invested so much into Fannie and Freddie over the years. Let's make them subject to FOIA.

I urge support of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, as the designee of the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz).

Mr. Chairman, the manager's amendment that I am offering on behalf of Chairman Chaffetz makes technical and conforming changes to the bill.

Applying FOIA to Fannie and Freddie while the entities remain in conservatorship will better ensure that the American people know what their government does with their taxpayer dollars. But, if and when Fannie and Freddie come out of conservatorship, the entities need to be able to operate as commercially competitive businesses.

This amendment clarifies that Fannie and Freddie may use exemption 4, which protects sensitive commercial information from disclosure, regardless of whether information was obtained from a person outside of Fannie or Freddie, to protect their financially sensitive materials from public disclosure.

Mr. Chairman, recognizing the administrative labors involved in setting up FOIA shops, the amendment also addresses the implementation date. Fannie and Freddie will likely need to hire staff, update their websites, and identify records to be made publicly available as a matter of course.

The manager's amendment, therefore, provides Fannie and Freddie 6 months after the bill's enactment to establish their respective staffs and protocols to administer FOIA.

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, though I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, FOIA does not require that all records be released to requesters. The FOIA statute allows agencies to withhold information under nine exemptions, which were designed to protect truly sensitive information that would be harmful to important interests if released.

Just last year, Congress clarified that the expectation--and now the legal requirement--is that agencies only withhold information when it is necessary to prevent harm to the interest that the exemption was intended to protect. The Johnson amendment clarifies that Fannie and Freddie would be allowed to withhold requested information under those nine exemptions, just as any other agency would be permitted to withhold information, if the enterprises reasonably foresee that disclosure would harm a protected interest.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, it is imperative that Fannie's and Freddie's conservator--the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA--scrutinize new purchasing strategies to ensure that the enterprises' dealings are in line with their charters to stimulate homeownership. If FHFA fails to guarantee the soundness of their business dealings, FOIA could empower the taxpayer to step in and hold accountable Fannie or Freddie.

For instance, thanks to taxpayers' explicit backing of Fannie earlier this year, Invitation Homes, the single-family rental business owned by the lucrative private equity firm Blackstone, secured a $1.8 billion initial public offering, or IPO, the largest since October of 2015.

In its IPO filing, Invitation Homes disclosed that Fannie, which received over $116 billion from the taxpayers in the aftershock of the financial crisis, is guaranteeing up to $1 billion in debt from Invitation. While Blackstone gets the money, the taxpayers take on the risk; and Fannie pivots unimpeded into the rental markets, leaving those hopeful of homeownership with less support.

Applying FOIA to Fannie and Freddie under this bill strengthens the guarantee that government-sponsored entities are fulfilling their mandate to stimulate homeownership rather than being in the business of supporting profitable, private equity investors on the backs of taxpayers.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment further clarifies the legislation's assurance of applicable disclosures as a mechanism to keep Fannie and Freddie consistent with their Federal charters to stimulate homeownership.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this bill, the Fannie and Freddie Open Records Act of 2017.

I want to start by thanking the sponsor of this bill, Chairman Chaffetz, for working with the Democratic members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to address concerns that we raised as well as concerns raised by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The bipartisan cooperation that was demonstrated on this bill should be a model for this body.

This bill would apply the Freedom of Information Act to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while they are in conservatorship or receivership. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are stockholder-owned, government-sponsored enterprises chartered by Congress to purchase mortgages and pool them into mortgage-backed securities to create liquidity in the mortgage market.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were brought into Federal conservatorship under the control of FHFA in September 2008. According to the CBO, during the financial crisis, Treasury purchased $187 billion of senior preferred stock from the two entities to ensure that they could continue to operate. Neither entity has drawn on Treasury support since 2012, both have returned to profitability, and the dividends they generate are paid to the Treasury.

There are some practical concerns with the underlying bill because it would apply FOIA to these private companies for the first time. The amendment Chairman Chaffetz will offer addresses some of those concerns, which I will discuss when we consider this amendment.

I would like to discuss some concerns with language that was added in this bill at the Rules Committee to address the estimated cost of the bill.

CBO estimates that this bill would increase the administrative costs of Fannie and Freddie by $310 million, with $10 million of that resulting in direct spending. This bill would address those costs by requiring commercial requesters to pay for processing FOIA requests made to Fannie and Freddie. This would be a significant change from the way FOIA typically works.

It is unclear how Fannie and Freddie could reasonably estimate how many FOIA requests they would receive or to know how to distribute administrative costs equitably among commercial requesters.

The bill would allow Fannie and Freddie to determine how much they

would charge commercial requesters. Whatever cost estimation methodologies Fannie and Freddie choose to use, the methodologies will almost certainly be challenged, potentially leading to litigation, which would be handled by the Department of Justice.

It is highly likely that banks would file FOIA requests to obtain information about the business practices and holdings of Fannie and Freddie. The costs charged to them for their requests would then be passed on to consumers.

I believe this language was intended to be helpful, but it is one result of applying to private companies a statute designed to apply to government agencies. We should carefully analyze this provision and its likely consequences as this bill moves forward in the legislative process. There may be a better way to address this issue.

I also hope that the chairman will continue to seek ways of expanding transparency in government, and that the committee's next step will be to require the disclosure of White House visitor logs.

The White House recently reversed what had been the Obama administration's policy of disclosing the records of who comes and goes from the White House. The president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said:

``This new secrecy policy undermines the rule of law and suggests this White House doesn't want to be accountable to the American people.''

I look forward to working with the chairman to address this very troubling reversal of a critical government transparency policy.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, but I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment, which would make improvements that address concerns raised by FHFA.

The manager's amendment would make several important improvements to the underlying bill. This amendment would provide Fannie and Freddie 6 months to implement the bill. This time is important to ensure they have staff and procedures in place to process FOIA requests.

This amendment would also clarify that Fannie and Freddie could use exemption 4 of FOIA in the same way that FHFA can currently use it to protect trade secrets and commercial or financial information generated by Fannie and Freddie.

Exemption 4 protects ``trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.'' Exemption 4 requires that that information can only be protected if it comes from an outside source rather than being generated by an agency itself.

Without the language added by this amendment, there would have been uncertainty as to whether confidential business information that would have been protected if Fannie or Freddie sent it to FHFA would have been protected when those entities were, themselves, responding to FOIA requests.

I appreciate Chairman Chaffetz' willingness to work with us in addressing these concerns, and I urge all Members to support this manager's amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, as the designee of the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett), I offer amendment No. 3.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett). This amendment simply makes clear that the application of FOIA to Fannie and Freddie will not limit disclosures regarding the loans to which Fannie and Freddie offer any type of guarantee or support.

I agree that Americans have the right to know what loans and other agreements Fannie and Freddie are backing. Earlier this year, Fannie Mae created a ``pilot program'' under which Fannie has backed a large investor's purchase of foreclosed homes that the investor will then lease. The public certainly has a right to information about such programs.

As Ms. Plaskett's amendment makes clear, such disclosures should occur before any loans are purchased or backed so that Congress can assess the potential effects on all stockholders, including taxpayers, home buyers, and renters. I appreciate the gentlewoman's thoughtful amendment, and I urge all Members to support it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Chair, I thank my friend from Florida for the opportunity to speak on this bill. And as a member of the House Financial Services Committee, I am grateful for the bipartisan leadership in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in bringing H.R. 1694 to the floor, for it is high time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be subject to the regimen of the Freedom of Information Act. This critical oversight tool is sorely past due for these government- sponsored agencies.

Over the past four decades, we have seen the waste and largess exhibited by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac embedded in their everyday operations. And while they got their start during the height of the Depression and performed an able task of setting high standards for the liquidity for mortgage credit, they have long outlived their original charter.

Oakley Hunter, the president and chairman of Fannie Mae back in the 1970s, described Fannie Mae as the world's largest floating crap game. Nothing has changed.

In the early 1980s, we found Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dominating, as they do today, 9 out of 10 mortgages in the United States, and yet they were highly unprofitable and highly suspect in their management. During that time, Senator William Proxmire led the charge in the United States Senate seeking answers about the enterprises' executive compensation.

Flash-forward to the 1990s, we saw executive compensation at Fannie Mae run amok.

During the 2000s, their imprudence and desire for growth paved the way for the U.S. housing crisis and global economic collapse.

More recently, we have discovered that Fannie Mae is spending $171 million in taxpayer funds on a new Taj Mahal office in Washington, D.C., to replace their already extraordinarily luxurious campus on Wisconsin Avenue, which one Washingtonian, Mr. Chairman, described as what Versailles would look like if Louis XIV had any money. According to the inspector general's report from last June, this 15-year cost of relocating Fannie Mae's headquarters and the construction of the new building now topped $770 million.

Mr. Chairman, as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac languish in Federal conservatorship following their collapse from the 2008 housing crisis, it is high time to apply FOIA to these GSEs and bring accountability and transparency for the American taxpayers.