Health Savings Act of 2018

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes for debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to debate this rule, but I would urge my colleague from Texas to be mindful that this ain't going nowhere, so we really are, when all is said and done, wasting our time. This is not likely to be taken up by the Senate in August, and why we are not doing other things, I simply cannot understand.

The Protect Medical Innovation Act and the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plans and Expanding Health Savings Accounts Act are worth considering. The gentleman from Texas certainly is an expert in this area and is most sincere. It is regrettable that the legislation, ultimately, that will pass the House of Representatives ain't going nowhere.

Taken together, these measures do nothing to ameliorate the Republican attempt to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, do nothing to curb rising drug costs, and do nothing to curtail skyrocketing premium hikes. Instead, H.R. 6311 continues the Republican majority's destructive path of undermining and destabilizing our health insurance markets.

This package of six bills will likely lead to fewer choices and competition for moderate- and low-income families who do not have the disposable income to pay premium costs up front.

In bringing up the second measure, H.R. 184, my friends across the aisle seem intent on ignoring the pressing issues facing our country, like passing sensible legislation that will address the country's ongoing gun violence epidemic, passing legislation that will protect our election infrastructure from hostile foreign hacking, or passing legislation that will help reunite the more than 2,500 separated children with their families. Rather, the Republican majority wants to waste valuable legislative time in repealing a tax that won't even be active until 2020.

This is the last week before we go on a 5-week recess and we are doing nothing. Even worse, these bills are not offset and, taken together with tomorrow's bills, will add up to $90 billion to our deficit. They are not paid for. And I challenge my colleague on the floor handling this rule to tell me where the pay-fors are and, if there are none, why are they not paid for--$90 billion.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly believe that the epidemic of gun violence that plagues our communities must be addressed in a comprehensive manner and without further delay. Unfortunately, our Nation has witnessed far too many senseless deaths caused each day by firearms, and that continues to rise.

Under a Republican majority, many commonsense reforms, such as the assault weapons ban--and somebody please tell me why anyone other than the military and law enforcement needs an assault weapon; I just, for the life of me, cannot understand it--were allowed to expire. I might add, flood insurance is getting ready to expire. We are not taking that measure up.

Providing nearly unfettered access to a variety of firearms does not make any sense. Someone said to me, well, there are 103 kinds of automatic weapons; and I say ban them all because they don't have any business in the hands of people in the streets at all.

While we need to preserve the rights of responsible gun owners--and I am one of them; I believe in the Second Amendment--we must focus more of our attention and efforts on keeping weapons out of the hands of dangerous individuals instead of attacking and undermining the healthcare for millions of hardworking Americans.

While the present administration works to further the majority's aim of dismantling the most popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act, like keeping children on their parents' health insurance until the age of 26 and protecting people with preexisting conditions, these bills continue to balloon Federal spending and deficits.

While we were promised increased revenue from the GOP tax cuts of 2017, with the GOP falling back on tired talking points like tax cuts paying for themselves, we now have the Congressional Budget Office projecting over $1 trillion in budget deficits in 2020, even before legislation like this passes.

Whatever happened to the conservative Republicans? Where did the fiscal conservative Republicans go, who are blowing up the deficit in this country? The amount of fiscal irresponsibility demonstrated by my friends across the aisle is shocking and will be a great detriment to all Americans in the future.

Moreover, these pieces of legislation do nothing to holistically solve the most pressing concerns hardworking Americans have with healthcare: ever-increasing premiums, unstable health markets, and exploding drug costs. In fact, in the last year and a half, the majority has gone out of their way to destabilize health markets as much as they can.

Instead of encouraging Americans to enroll in health insurance, the Department of Health and Human Services has created an advertising campaign explicitly undermining the individual insurance markets created under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have cut the Department's budget for those grassroots organizations whose sole purpose is to assist folks in signing up for health insurance. How much of the budget did they cut? 92 percent.

In addition to this, HHS has threatened States that try to lower premiums, and the Trump administration has even canceled cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers, which the CBO projects will leave 1 million more people uninsured, raise premiums by 20 to 25 percent over the next 2 years, and increase the Federal deficit by $200 billion.

Listen, people, when we started this business of the Affordable Care Act--as much as my friends on the other side who have the prerogative, in the majority, to be in disagreement with this measure as well as any others and to offer this thing that ain't going nowhere here today--the simple fact of the matter is, some few years back, we had 42 million Americans who were uninsured. We now have more than 42 million Americans uninsured, and that is wrong.

I said yesterday in the Rules Committee, all of us, 535--the Senate and the House--and the six delegates, ought to be locked up up here until we come up with a sensible solution for the American people with reference to a crisis.

It was said yesterday by the chair of this committee that the plan that is going to be offered--that we did offer and then they voted against--would be the best healthcare plan in the world. Well, it ain't the best healthcare plan

in the world. The best healthcare plans in the world are in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, and a whole bunch of other places other than America.

And while the Trump administration has pushed junk healthcare plans, even the organizations that originally lobbied the administration for access to these plans now say they no longer want to use them.

All in all, as a result of these policies, as I have indicated, 4 million fewer Americans have health insurance than when Donald John Trump took office, and healthcare costs continue to rise unabated.

I need not remind my colleagues that people in the United States pay far more for healthcare than in any other industrialized nation on Earth, and, in most cases, they get far less. We spend over 18 percent of our gross domestic product on healthcare, compared to most other countries, which spend less than 10 percent, with much of the disparity occurring thanks to higher drug prices and administrative overhead.

Despite the money we pour into our healthcare, the United States has the shortest life expectancy and highest infant mortality of any modern industrialized nation--let me repeat that--the shortest life expectancy, and the highest infant mortality of any modern industrialized nation.

We have far fewer physicians--and we had better do something about that; not in this measure, not in the Affordable Healthcare Act. We had better get busy trying to figure out how to provide more physicians, more nurses, more research for a variety of measures that are oncoming that our Nation is going to be confronted with.

We have fewer hospital beds and, in perhaps what is the most depressing statistic of all of U.S. healthcare, the United States is one of only 13 countries in the world where the rate of maternal mortality, defined as the death of a mother in the year after she gives birth, is now worse than it was 25 years ago.

And here we are, continuing to jaw jack about something that ain't going nowhere, and we have situations in our country that all of us know something about, all of us care about. There is no Republican in the House or Democrat in the House that doesn't care about their constituents and their healthcare. And at the very same time, what we are winding up doing is arguing with each other and nothing is getting done, and that is just dead wrong for this country.

Black women, in particular, are three times more likely to die from health-related issues to their pregnancy. How can we seemingly pay for more healthcare now than at any point in our Nation's history and, yet, at the same time, be getting worse care than we were decades ago?

We have a fundamentally broken system. The majority doesn't seem to have any way of fixing it, and I am not even sure that they want to fix it. Indeed, they seem to be going out of their way making it somehow worse.

Now I hear all of the voices out there. I had a constituent call the other day to tell me that I wasn't as liberal as his people were, liberal, and that I didn't understand this whole healthcare system.

And I told him: Listen, man, in 1992, when I ran for office, I ran on the premise of universal healthcare for every American, period. And when we did the Affordable Healthcare Act, it ultimately got called the ObamaCare Act.

I have said in the Rules Committee repeatedly, it probably should have been called the Hastings/ObamaCare Act, or perhaps we would have done what Dr. Burgess asked us to do and it would be called the Burgess Healthcare Act.

I don't care what it is called. It needs to be called something that is going to help every American, and not just a handful, and certainly not the richest people in this country who don't even need any healthcare. They have been at the socialized healthcare business for all of their lives and, therefore, people like Donald John Trump don't need to worry about this kind of thing.

It is those people that are vulnerable. It is those people on Medicaid in Florida and other States that didn't expand Medicaid, 900,000 of them in my State, that are left to the mercies of the system.

And what do they do? All of us know what they do. When they have healthcare, they go to the hospital, to the emergency room, generally speaking, they are treated, and then those taxpayers in those respective jurisdictions wind up paying for it.

So why don't we get our act together and try to do something about it now?

I have proudly advocated for multiple pieces of legislation that will improve and strengthen the Medicare system, including H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, which will provide all individuals residing in the United States and the United States territories, with affordable healthcare, including that which is medically most necessary, such as primary and preventative care, dietary and nutritional therapies, prescription drugs, emergency care, long-term care, mental health services, dental services, and vision care. Underscore preventative care. And if we did more in that arena, we wouldn't have as much of a problem as we do today.

Medicare for All will save taxpayers hundreds of dollars a month. Now, I firmly believe that we must focus priorities in the interest of the American people to ensure that our citizens have continued access to healthcare services.

So when we come back here in September, when we finish all of our fighting in November, and we have somebody that is going to get elected, 435 of us will return here and be sworn in in January. Let's all make a commitment that we are going to work together, together, to get all of the resources, the tremendous minds, the incredible staffs that work here in this institution together, and try to make sure that we do the right thing by the American people and pass a measure that will cause everyone to have affordable care.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule that would change the rules of the House to prevent any legislation from being considered that would reduce the guaranteed benefits for individuals enrolled in either Medicare or Medicaid programs.

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 urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat

the previous question so that we may protect these critical programs for this generation and the next.

Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared now to advise my colleague from Texas that I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close when, and if, he is.

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

Mr. Speaker, in closing, this place, the people's House, should be about approaching our congressional responsibilities and daily activities in a manner that is fair and respectful to all Americans; in a manner where the appropriate committee of jurisdiction holds hearings and markups; in a manner where experts in the field are respected and consulted; in a manner where Members of both political parties have the ability to offer amendments and debate the contents of bills that come to the House floor.

Unfortunately, in this historically closed-off, Republican run House, that is not the case. And let me make it very clear. Even though in the Ways and Means and the Appropriations Committee, as a matter of practice, we allow for closed rules, we now have, with these three rules that are likely to be finished today, we have 95 closed rules. This is 2018, and not in the history of the people's House has the process been as closed.

When the Speaker of the House of Representatives began this session, he indicated that it would be the most open session that we would have. And yet, it is not the case.

I spoke earlier about immigration, and I saw this morning where the majority leader has determined, even though having promised his own conference that he would have a vote on immigration, he ain't gonna do it.

Now, something is wrong with this process and it needs to be corrected, and we can correct it going forward. We will make 100, and then we will be historically referenced as the most closed Congress in the history of the United States of America.

What we see are my friends across the aisle, bending over backwards to reward a very specific and elite constituency. Week after week, the powerful gun lobby is rewarded as Republican leadership refuses to bring up even the most commonsense gun violence prevention legislation.

The next week, like today, the powerful medical insurance lobby chalks up a win as this Republican-led Congress votes in favor of special interests over the interests of hardworking Americans.

Some other people that make out like bandits that we never talk about are the insurance companies. I could spend a whole hour talking about how they are benefiting while we are about the business of tying each other in knots with verbiage rather than with substantive legislation.

Mr. Speaker, while there is no quick fix to any of these measures, not to gun violence, opioid addiction, the immigration problems, and ongoing foreign cyber attacks on our election system's infrastructure, we simply must engage in the complicated and difficult process of improving our country's current policies.

I, as well as my colleagues on this side of the aisle, stand ready to work with Members of Congress to bring commonsense legislation to the floor that will benefit all Americans and not just the rarified few.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and a ``no'' vote on the previous question. This measure we are debating here today ain't going nowhere, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1011 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), 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 1011 provides for the consideration of two bills aimed at removing some of the most burdensome aspects of the Affordable Care Act, and, as a result, moving toward lowering healthcare costs for the millions of Americans who are confronted daily with rising premiums, rising deductibles, and rising drug prices.

With each bill, we take one step closer to ultimately eliminating the Affordable Care Act's government-run approach to healthcare and return to a market-driven solution that puts patients first.

The first bill in today's rule, H.R. 184, the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2017, would repeal the excise tax on medical devices imposed on American companies by the previously mentioned Affordable Care Act.

The second bill in today's rule, H.R. 6311, the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plans and Expanding Health

Savings Accounts Act of 2018, expands the availability and the use of health savings accounts to allow individuals and their families to save their own money and budget for the healthcare needs they have that otherwise would not be part of their budget.

Today's resolution provides for a closed rule for H.R. 184, the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2017. This is the standard practice for a tax-related measure on the House floor. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member on the Committee on Ways and Means. The rule does provide the minority with the customary motion to recommit with or without instructions.

The second part of today's resolution provides for a closed rule for H.R. 6311, the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plans and Expanding Health Savings Accounts Act of 2018. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means. The customary motion to recommit with or without instructions is provided to the minority.

This week, Republicans in the House continue our efforts to increase more healthcare options while driving down premiums in the individual market. According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, premiums on the exchange are 105 percent higher, on average, in calendar year 2017, compared to premiums in the individual market in calendar year 2013, which was the last year before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

It is important that we continue to address the negative impact that the Affordable Care Act has had on the individual market and to help Americans across the country be more in charge of their healthcare purchases.

Thus far, the Republican Congress has been successful in nullifying the individual mandate, repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and delaying many of the harmful taxes on American businesses and American consumers. I am also encouraged by the actions of the administration in permitting more low-cost limited duration insurance plans and allowing access to association health plans for more small businesses.

These are choices that are provided to the American people so that they, the American people, can be in the driver's seat, not the other way around with the ACA's government-approved one-size-fits-all healthcare model.

With that in mind, two bills we are considering this week seek to expand and improve health savings accounts. Under the current rule, H.R. 6311, the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plan and Expanding Health Savings Accounts Act of 2018, will enhance the benefit of tax- preferred health accounts so that individuals can better plan and save for their healthcare needs, and, also, these individuals will see lower premiums on their healthcare plans.

For the last several Congresses, I have argued to improve the utility of health savings accounts, and so I am pleased to see that these important policies are being advanced through the House this week.

In addition to offering health insurance, many employers often arrange to reimburse their employees and their dependants some of their medical expenses that are not covered by health insurance. Health flexible spending accounts and health reimbursement arrangements are two of the more common arrangements offered by employers.

I have heard the frustration of employees, many of whom are my constituents in north Texas, over forfeiting the remaining amounts in their flexible spending account at the end of each plan year. We can all agree that the healthcare needs and purchases vary from year to year, where one year a person may have more medical expenses than the next or the other way around.

One of the provisions in H.R. 6311 eliminates the arbitrary ``use it or lose it'' rule and allows flexible spending account balances to be carried over to the next plan year within a reasonable annual flexible spending account contribution limit.

Another provision allows working seniors that are covered under an HSA-eligible high deductible health plan and enrolled in Medicare part A to continue to contribute to their health savings account. Just because someone becomes eligible for Medicare because of age, they should not be prohibited from continuing to contribute to a health savings account.

Under current law, there are annual health savings account contribution limits. In 2018, the limit for an individual was $3,450. For families, that amount was $6,900. While these limits are updated annually for inflation, they are significantly less than the combined limit on annual out-of-pocket deductible expenses.

H.R. 6311 would allow individuals to increase their contributions to equal to the combined annual limit on the out-of-pocket and deductible expenses under their HSA-qualified insurance plan. That would be $6,550 for an individual and $13,300 for a family this year.

The Affordable Care Act limits the option of individuals enrolled in bronze and so-called copper, or catastrophic, plans to make HSA contributions. Also, only those under 30 or those that qualify for a hardship exemption are actually able to purchase the so-called copper health plan. That is a 50 percent actuarial value health plan.

So, today, I am pleased that a bill that I introduced with Representative Roskam, H.R. 6314, the Health Savings Act of 2018, to expand the eligibility and the access to health savings accounts by allowing plans categorized as catastrophic and bronze plans in the individual and small group markets to qualify for HSA contributions. That is included in this bill.

Lastly, I appreciate working with the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam on H.R. 6311. One of the key provisions of the bill is to provide an off-ramp from ObamaCare's rising premiums and limited choices by allowing the premium tax credit to be used for qualified plans offered outside of the law's exchanges and healthcare.gov.

In addition, it expands access to the lowest premium plans available, so-called copper or catastrophic plans, for all individuals purchasing coverage in the individual market and allows the premium tax credit to be used to offset the cost of such plans.

I recognize not everyone will choose to have a health savings account, but they should have the option because HSAs represent a powerful tool to lower prices and improve access to quality care for everyone, and those are goals that we can all share.

Now, it is well documented that many of the provisions contained within the Affordable Care Act have negative consequences on patients, both in access to care and in affordability. One of the provisions that has been universally criticized is that, on a large, bipartisan nature, its repeal was called for almost immediately after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. This is the tax on medical device manufacturers, or more commonly referred to as the medical device tax.

It seems illogical that within a piece of legislation that was purported to make medical care available, more accessible to all Americans, the Federal Government would want to tax the very providers of medical innovation that create devices to improve the delivery of healthcare, but, nevertheless, that is exactly what happened when ObamaCare passed in 2010, and it was done as a means to pay for the astronomical price tag that accompanied the Affordable Care Act.

This tax burden is unfair, and it actually increases costs that consumers pay at their doctors' offices. The tax has also been cited by dozens of medical device manufacturers who have or are considering moving their operations overseas so that they can continue to innovate without the heavy burden of this tax stifling their growth. This tax slows the creation of new techniques and devices, which will make the delivery of medicine more efficient, and it puts at risk the jobs that were created by the creation of such devices.

For anyone who thinks that we are merely talking about the largest and most expensive pieces of technology found within a hospital-- basically, your MRI, CAT scans, and some surgical equipment--let's be clear that

this tax covers every piece of medical equipment, from those large machines to the smallest of items, including syringes used to deliver lifesaving antibiotics and vaccines. It continues to negatively impact a number of constituents in my district and, I am certain, in districts around the country, and it does continue to create a burden on a number of companies.

The medical device tax has led to the elimination of thousands of good-paying jobs, and repealing it would be the first step to bringing those jobs back and stem the loss of future jobs within this vital industry that is helping to mitigate rising costs of healthcare due to the burdensome provisions within the Affordable Care Act.

This is a tax on business, a tax on consumers, and a tax on innovation. To date, 33,000 jobs have been lost in the medical device industry since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and it is projected that over 130,000 additional jobs are on the chopping block.

Why would anyone be surprised about this? Excise taxes--and that is what this is, an excise tax--are meant to lead to a reduction in the consumption of the goods being taxed. We place an excise tax on cigarettes. We want to discourage people from smoking. We make it burdensome to afford a smoking habit.

Did we really intend, with the passage of the Affordable Care Act by congressional Democrats in 2010, to make it more burdensome to use more efficient medical devices?

H.R. 184 has bipartisan, bicameral support, with currently 277 cosponsors. Republican leadership in the House has heard this request and heard the calls from many Members within this body and is moving this bill in a responsible way to put Americans back to work and lower healthcare costs for all.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support today's rule and the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The gentleman is quite correct in identifying the other body as sometimes an obstacle to good public policy, for it was 1 year ago that the other body blocked a health care reform that this body had passed the previous May.

But, Mr. Speaker, I want to draw the House's attention to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The title of the article is ``TrumpCare beats ObamaCare.'' And I just want to quote a little bit from this article.

To set the stage, in December, with the repeal of the individual mandate, and quoting here: ``But while many people didn't realize it at the time, it turns out that Mr. Trump has been helping to improve an important source of insurance coverage since virtually the moment he took office.''

Continuing to quote here: ``By prioritizing economic growth and reducing the tax and regulatory burdens on U.S. business, Mr. Trump has helped create an economy with more job openings than ever before. As if by magic, the invisible hand of a freer marketplace is now generating new benefits as employers compete to fill all those open positions.''

Continuing to quote here: ``For the first time in six years, the share of U.S. workers offered health insurance through their employer has risen, a sign a tighter labor market is prompting businesses to offer more generous benefits.''

So, Mr. Speaker, I simply submit that the activities of the Trump administration have, indeed, improved the healthcare landscape in this country. That is something we should acknowledge and embrace.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close as well.

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

The gentleman from Florida is making a point about open rules, and I do feel obligated to point out in the 111th Congress--that was the Congress that was the first 2 years of President Obama's administration--in the 111th Congress, under Speaker Pelosi, the majority had zero open rules. That is zero open rules in the 2 years in which we saw the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the passage of Dodd-Frank; the House-passed Waxman/Markey, which was a cap-and-trade global warming bill, so significant pieces of legislation passed the floor of this House, all under closed rules.

But, Mr. Speaker, today's rule brings forward two pieces of legislation that will have a meaningful impact on Americans' healthcare costs, including the premiums and the prices they pay for medicines.

H.R. 184, the Protect Medical Innovation Act of 2017, which will repeal the Affordable Care Act's ill-conceived medical device tax, and H.R. 6311, the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plans and Expanding Health Savings Account Act of 2018, which will provide greater freedom for Americans to use their own money to pay for medical expenses out of their health savings accounts, both of these build on the House's work over the past 2 years to make healthcare a more patient-centered market.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to thank Representatives Paulsen and Roskam for their work on these measures. I urge my colleagues to support today's rule and move the debate forward on this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, as we observe American Education Week, I rise today to recognize Leslie Diane Hiatt, a remarkable teacher and social activist in my 40th Congressional District of California. As a teacher at Bell Gardens Elementary in the Montebello Unified School District, Ms. Hiatt has inspired her students to act on injustices in their community and in the world overall.

Born in Whittier, California, on December 10, 1960, to James and Jean Hiatt, Ms. Hiatt was raised in a loving family that encouraged activism and equality. From a young age, her commitment to social justice and service to her community was apparent. In high school, where she organized the first girls' track team, she often spent her lunch break at the local elementary school organizing intramural sports for the younger students. She also spent her free time writing letters to politicians about air pollution and the Vietnam War, trying to right the wrongs of the world. In 1979, Leslie graduated from Monte Vista High School in Whittier, and went on to attend the University of Southern California, from which she graduated in 1983.

Subsequently, Leslie started her teaching career at Bell Gardens Elementary School In 1988, she pursued her Master of Arts at California State University, Fullerton. She also received a Math Authorization from Center X at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001.

Throughout her 34-year career as an educator, Ms. Hiatt has worked with immigrant and Latino communities. This has positioned her perfectly to help inspire students to believe they cannot be bystanders, and that in order to bring change in the world, they must use their voice to speak up about injustices. To encourage these conversations, she has her students write letters to government representatives and emphasizes the importance of persistence and collaboration. These experiences have empowered her students. Here are some of their particularly important efforts over the years.

In 1989, one of Ms. Hiatt's classes refused to have grapes from the school cafeteria after learning about the United Farm Workers movement and the dangers that grape workers faced as they were being exposed to pesticides. As a result of the ongoing struggle of grape workers, her students wrote letters to their school board, and after a lengthy debate, the district honored the grape boycott. The students' actions later received attention from labor leader Cesar Chavez.

In 2015, as her students learned about the history of immigration in California and the unconstitutional ``Mexican Repatriation'' deportations of the 1930s, her students were dismayed at the complete absence of information on the deportations in their history textbooks. They were also astounded to know that there has never been a federal apology for those 1930s deportations, which expelled over 1.2 million United States citizens and over two million Mexican nationals who were legally living in the United States. After drafting a letter to President Obama asking for a federal apology for the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, the students entered State Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia's ``There Ought to Be a Law'' contest. Their goal was to have California recognize the history of the Mexican Repatriation and include it in California history textbooks. As winners of the contest, Ms. Hiatt's students traveled to Sacramento to testify in support of the bill, and in the fall of 2015, Governor Brown signed the bill, AB 146, into law.

Later that same year, Ms. Hiatt's students wrote to me asking for my help in obtaining a federal apology for the unconstitutional deportations. In 2016 and 2017, I introduced H.R. 6314 and H.R. 1412, respectively, which would establish a committee to officially study the Mexican Repatriation and to recommend appropriate remedies.

To this day, Ms. Hiatt's students continue to speak up and take action on pressing world events. They have focused on such subjects as the Lakota Tribe in North Dakota, Hurricane Harvey, and the earthquake in Mexico City.

When Ms. Hiatt isn't teaching her classes and working with her students to implement new legislation, she also co-teaches the STEM Club at Bell Gardens Elementary, and helps organize the school's annual science fair. She is also currently taking science education classes at California State University, Long Beach, to learn more about science content and pedagogy, and she is a member of the university's Elementary Science Learning Academy program.

Ms. Hiatt has the infinite love and support of her husband, Francisco Lopez, and her son, Joaquin Lopez, whose encouragement inspires her to continue her work as a passionate educator.

Ms. Hiatt has shown exemplary dedication to children and families in my 40th Congressional District, and I am pleased to recognize her work as an educator and leader. I hope my colleagues will join me in recognizing her tremendous activism, her commitment to social justice, and her determination to empower and develop a new generation of conscientious and compassionate activists.