Clarity on Small Business Participation in Category Management Act of 2019

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 28 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), my good friend, the ranking member, 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 be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 28, providing for consideration of H.R. 264, making appropriations for financial services and general government; H.R. 265, making appropriations for Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies programs; H.R. 266, making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies; and H.R. 267, making appropriations for the Department of Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related agencies, each for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019. The rule provides for consideration of each bill under a closed rule.

Mr. Speaker, we need to pass these bills, because we need to reopen government.

Let me just say to my colleagues, quite frankly, this is not the way I had hoped we would start the new Congress, essentially cleaning up the mess that my Republican friends left us from the last Congress, but we are where we are, and this is an emergency. It is time to reopen the government.

Mr. Speaker, what we saw last night from the President, in my opinion, was a disgrace. He used the Oval Office to fearmonger and smear immigrants. There was nothing new, no plan to get us out of this shutdown, no solutions, just more of the same offensive rhetoric we have heard time and time again from this President.

But this Democratic majority is moving quickly to end the Trump shutdown. On day one of this new Congress, we passed a complete funding package using bipartisan language to reopen government, and now, today, we are taking further action to help the American people while responsibly protecting our borders.

This rule will allow us to pass individual appropriations bills to reopen key government agencies. That includes the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, to prevent Americans' tax refunds from being withheld during the shutdown; the Department of Agriculture, to prevent hungry families from losing the lifeline of SNAP benefits and assure that our farmers get the services that they need; the Department of the Interior, to prevent our national parks and monuments from being further degraded and allow EPA to resume its work protecting public health and our environment; and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to help hardworking families in the process of realizing the dream of homeownership. These bills offer us a way out of the President's shutdown, an embarrassing spectacle that never should have happened in the first place.

Nineteen days ago, the President of the United States threw a temper tantrum. He went back on his word, breaking his promise to sign bipartisan appropriations bills that would have prevented a quarter of our government from shutting down.

He turned on FOX News or some rightwing radio show somewhere and changed his mind. Suddenly, the President demanded $5 billion in funding for his offensive border wall just to keep the lights on-- billions of dollars, by the way, that would just have been a downpayment on an unnecessary project that would cost tens of billions of dollars, and not at Mexico's expense like President Trump promised over and over and over and over again.

Now the costs have been shifted to the American taxpayer, when, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling, only 25 percent of the public says they support Trump shutting down the government over the wall--25 percent. This is crazy, but this doesn't have to continue.

At his press conference the other day, the President boasted he could keep our government closed for years. Now, he may not know how to get us out of this mess, but this Democratic majority does, and there are many responsible Republicans on the other side of the aisle who are with us on reopening the government.

Last week, our funding package passed with bipartisan support. Seven Republicans voted with us, including Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes much of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In addition, a growing number of Senate Republicans have encouraged the majority leader to bring those bills to the floor, including Senator Collins of Maine and Senator Gardner of Colorado. Senator Gardner said, recently: ``The Senate has done it last Congress; we should do it again today,'' and I agree.

So let's send these bills to the Senate so they can once again pass Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.

The Senate Majority Leader already supported these bills once. Why not support them again to finally reopen this government?

Because we can't wait for the President to publicly promise to sign these bills before we act--we already know his word isn't worth much; his broken promise is what got us here--it has fallen to Congress to get us out of this shutdown.

Congressman Hurd said after voting for the Democratic appropriations package last week: ``Ultimately, Congress is a coequal branch of government, and it should operate that way.'' He is absolutely right. And these bills are this majority's latest attempt to fulfill our responsibility.

There are 40 million Americans who rely on SNAP to put food on the table. Their benefits will lapse shortly if this shutdown is allowed to continue.

Mr. Speaker, why should Americans go hungry just because the President wants to appease someone like Rush Limbaugh? Why in the world would Congress sit idly by as thousands of people trying to buy a new home or refinance FHA-insured mortgages are left in limbo?

We are now in tax season. If we don't end this shutdown, more than 2 million Americans who every month turn to tax assistance centers will find them closed as they try to complete their annual returns.

This is madness, and it is completely unnecessary. Tax returns delayed, home purchases in limbo, food assistance in jeopardy for the hungry, trash piling up in our national parks, it is an embarrassment-- not to mention the 800,000 Federal workers who aren't getting paid, and countless more contractors.

It can be over in a heartbeat if we pass these bills and the Senate takes yes for an answer. These bills honor our responsibility to turn the lights back on. They don't waste even a dollar of taxpayer money on the President's immoral border wall, nor should they. People overwhelmingly object to building it.

I hope this President comes to his senses, that he stops holding our Nation hostage as he plays to the fringes of his base. But none of us can control that. We do have the ability, though, to do our jobs and to end the shutdown. That is what this Congress will do again today, and I urge all of my colleagues to join with us.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Oklahoma's comments. I just want to make a couple of quick points before yielding to my next speaker.

We, as Democrats, are struggling in support of border security, and we have supported initiative after initiative to basically make our borders more secure. We believe in investing in infrastructure and more personnel. We believe in providing more judges to be able to adjudicate asylum claims so we can process people more expeditiously. We believe in technology. It is 2019, yet the President insists on this medieval approach to border security, which most experts say is just ineffective.

On top of all of that, our objection is that it is going to cost tens of billions of dollars. The President said that Mexico is going to pay for it, but now he is saying that the American taxpayers are going to pay for it. I mean, give me a break.

As far as why we are doing the strategy of taking up these Senate- passed bills, let me remind my colleagues: They passed the Senate 92-6 back in August.

I would have liked a different process. My friends were in charge of everything up to a week ago. They controlled the House; they controlled the Senate; and they controlled the White House. Yet they sent people home during the holidays and just kicked the can down the road, and we have inherited this mess from the last Congress. So we are doing the best we can.

If the Senate would vote, like they did in August, again for these bills--92-6--we won't need the President. We could override his veto; we could reopen the government; and we could stop all of this nonsense right now. That is my hope.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my friend from Washington State, a former member of the Rules Committee. I should just tell him-- and I am a little bit surprised, since he was on the Rules Committee-- two of his amendments that he offered didn't even comply with the House rules, so that is why they wouldn't be made in order.

But let me just say to him, as I began my remarks, it is unfortunate that we had to start this Congress cleaning up after the last Congress, but that is where we are. That is what you have given us. And I am eager to return to regular order as soon as we reopen this government.

What we are witnessing is extraordinary. In fact, it is unprecedented. For the first time in history, we have begun a new Congress in the middle of a government shutdown.

I tried last month to bring up appropriations bills, bills that Mr. Hoyer offered on the floor to reopen this government, but you shut me down every single time, so here we are.

We meant it when we said that we would do everything we can to reopen this government, because this is a real emergency. 800,000 hardworking civil servants are either furloughed or working without pay. That is what an emergency looks like. This is an emergency.

I appreciate the kind of laid-back attitude of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle who are like: Well, let's start all over again. Let's reopen the process. Let's have endless debate from now until whenever.

But do you know what? It is not us who are not being paid; it is our constituents. So this is an emergency. It is time that all of us come together and end this ridiculous shutdown and then get on to the business of the future. That is what I am committed to.

I hope that the Rules Committee will be much more accommodating to my friends on the other side of the aisle than my friends were to us, by the way, overseeing the most closed Congress in the history of the United States of America.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).

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

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Mitchell) left the floor, but I know Mr. Newhouse is still here, and I am complimented by the fact that they quote me so much. But I want to quote me, too, because I am going through what I have said about open rules and about the way this House should be run.

On November 14 on the floor I said:

And I am not suggesting that every rule needs to be an open

rule or that there is never a time for a closed rule, but

there is never a time for more than 100 closed rules. There

is no justification for that.

That is me. And on April 24, I said:

I am under no illusion that every bill has to be an open

rule; although it would be nice to have at least one symbolic

open rule before the year is out.

On April 13, I said:

I can't promise that every rule is going to be an open

rule, but I can say that there would be a greater attempt to

try to accommodate Members.

On September 2, I said:

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am not suggesting that everything that

the House considers should be under an open rule. There are

times when a closed rule might be necessary. But more than

100 closed rules? There is no justification for that.

So I think I am being pretty consistent here, because I have actually voted for closed rules on this floor that have been suggested in times of emergency. I voted for one to actually bring a continuing resolution to the floor so that we wouldn't have to deal with the mess that we are in right now.

So in times of emergency, in times of life or death, yes, there are justifications for a closed rule, and this is one of them because this is last year's work. This is what my friends on the other side left us with, unfinished business from last year. Not only unfinished business, but they allowed the President to shut the government down.

So hundreds of thousands of American workers are in a panic right now because last year's majority, my Republican friends, did not do their job.

This is ridiculous. We ought to figure out a way to have our discussions without shutting the government down. This is not the way you are supposed to run government. And so we are offering a solution here so that we can reopen the government and continue our conversations about whatever you want.

The gentleman from Oklahoma said we should split the difference on the border wall.

Mexico was supposed to pay for it.

Why are we splitting the difference? Why are we assuming the cost of a border wall when the President said that Mexico was going to pay for it, a border wall that most experts say is useless and ridiculous and that that money could be better spent on other ways of enforcing border security?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

Mr. Speaker, let me say to my friend from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) that I think he is one of the best Members of this Chamber. I admire him, and I think that he is absolutely right when he says that the Appropriations Committee did its work, and that goes for Republicans and Democrats. People worked together, and they moved appropriations bills forward. So I find no fault with and I have no blame for the appropriators.

What I do blame is his leadership that, at the last minute, when the President decided to have a temper tantrum and threatened to shut the government down, the Republican leadership was complicit, basically, and said: We will go along with this. And here we are.

By the way, I can't wait to get this over with so we can get on to other business. By the way, we are going to bring up the disaster appropriations bill next week. We have a notice out asking for amendments. I think the deadline is on Friday at noon. I can't recall the last time a disaster appropriations bill ever solicited amendments. We are going to do that. But I appreciate his words.

Mr. Speaker, this is an emergency. We are now dealing with a major crisis in this country, and it is not just Federal workers. USA Today reported last week: ``Government shutdown 2019: Homebuyers with USDA mortgages can't close on house sales.''

Mr. Speaker, I include this article in the Record.

Government Shutdown 2019: Homebuyers With USDA Mortgages Can't Close on

House Sales

[From USA Today, Jan. 3, 2019]

(By Janna Herron)

Jordan and Tracey Smith of Madison, Maine, were scheduled

to close on their first home on Friday. But the government

shutdown has gotten in the way.

The couple needs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help

finalize their mortgage that is guaranteed by the agency. But

the USDA's operations have been closed for 13 days, so the

couple and their five children remain in limbo.

``We're living out of boxes. We're paying our landlord on a

week-to-week basis, but he has people waiting to move in,''

says Jordan Smith, 32. ``We just want to move and get this

process over with.''

It's the same for other borrowers who depend on the USDA.

The department provides--through private lenders--mortgages

with no down payment requirements and low interest rates and

fees to rural and suburban homebuyers. It's a small program,

helping just over 140,000 people to buy a home in 2017, but

is considered one of the best options around if you're

eligible.

``We just can't close a USDA loan without a commitment

letter from them. ``Your loan

is at a standstill,'' says Pava Leyrer, the chief operating

office of Northern Mortgage Services in Grandville, Michigan.

Leyrer's company is an approved USDA lender.

Leyrer is telling her affected clients to call their

representatives. Otherwise, they may ultimately need to

switch into a different loan. ``How long will the seller

wait, especially if the sales contract expires?'' she says.

Waiting for repair money

In other cases, those who already have a USDA mortgage are

running into trouble. Jenneffer Azcuy, a homeowner in Lynn

Haven, Florida, with a USDA mortgage, is waiting to get the

insurance money she needs to repair her house after it was

damaged by Hurricane Michael in October.

``Since my insurance repair check is over $7,500, the USDA

controls the disbursement of funds,'' Azcuy says ``But the

money is tied up.''

On mortgages it guarantees, the USDA requires that it

oversees how insurance claims funds are used to make sure

they are spent properly. When insured losses exceed $7,500,

the agency requires the funds to be deposited into an escrow

account it controls.

Azcuy has a contractor lined up to repair her leaky roof,

replace a fence, and fix the gutters and outside doors. She

has called the USDA for help but can't leave messages because

the voicemail is full.

``It's ridiculous. This town is devastated as it is from

the hurricane,'' she says.

What about other mortgages?

The other mortgages backed by the government are unaffected

so far by the shutdown. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the

Veterans Administration--which all back home loans--are

running as normal.

The Federal Housing Administration, which guarantees

mortgages popular among first-time homebuyers, is operating

with a smaller staff because of the shutdown but is still

approving loans.

``You can get some answers,'' Leyrer says, but adds: ``They

are slower to respond, and it takes longer to get through on

the phone because of limited staff.''

Lenders are also working around other shutdown-induced

hiccups.

For instance, they can't verify a person's tax information

with the Internal Revenue Service, which has limited

services. As a result, many lenders are still approving those

loans conditionally and will confirm the information later

when the IRS reopens, says John Stearns, a loan originator

with American Fidelity Mortgage Services in Mequon,

Wisconsin.

``If there is a problem, then I have to figure it out

then,'' Stearns says.

On Capitol Hill

Azcuy and the Smiths hope the new House of Representatives

convening on Thursday can end the shutdown. Democratic House

leaders have scheduled votes on a package of bills to reopen

the federal government and provide more time for Congress to

negotiate a border funding deal with the White House.

Until then, they wait.

``My wife and I support Donald Trump. We agree with border

security,'' Jordan Smith says. ``But he has to look and see

that this is affecting other people's lives.''

Mr. Speaker, the article reports on the situation of Jordan and Tracey Smith of Madison, Maine, and their five children. They were scheduled to close on their very first home last Friday, but this ridiculous Trump shutdown ruined that. They need the Department of Agriculture to finalize their mortgage, but USDA has been closed for weeks.

Here is what Mr. Smith said: ``We're living out of boxes. ``We're paying our landlord on a week-to-week basis, but he has people waiting to move in.''

So lives are being thrown into turmoil, and we don't have a lot of time to just carry on these conversations and endless debates. This is a time for action.

This is the first time a prior Congress ended in a government shutdown. It is fitting. It is almost like an exclamation point to the President's first 2 years in office.

But it is a new Congress, and we are ready to responsibly clean up this mess and do what the last Congress could not do. We are offering an extremely reasonable solution to this unnecessary government shutdown. The underlying legislation is virtually identical to the four appropriations bills that already passed the Senate, 92-6.

Compare that to what the prior Republican majority put forward in the waning days of last Congress. They passed a partisan funding bill with billions of dollars for the President's wall, legislation they knew Democrats would never support and that the Senate would never pass. Then they left town. They refused to even recognize me when I tried again and again to bring up a bipartisan bill to end the shutdown.

800,000 workers stopped receiving paychecks. That includes, by the way, thousands of border and law enforcement officers, more than 41,000 Federal law enforcement officers, people like FBI agents and DEA agents, nearly 54,000 Customs and Border Patrol agents and Customs officers, and almost 90 percent of the Department of Homeland Security employees.

This Trump shutdown is an embarrassment. We owe our Federal employees and all Americans better than this. Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to vote for this rule and the previous question and join with us in supporting these underlying bipartisan funding bills. This is another chance for us to do the right thing. Let's take it and bring an end to this unnecessary and painful Trump shutdown.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, Chairman McGovern, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are back again on appropriations, and we are back again on the exact same set of bills as before.

Last week, the House agreed, over Republican objections, to pass a set of appropriations bills, six of which would fund the relevant departments for a full year, the seventh of which would fund the Department of Homeland Security until February 8.

Today, not content with already having passed these bills once, my friends in the majority are again bringing up four individual bills that were part of the same package covering the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development bill, Financial Services and

general government bill, the Agriculture bill, and the Interior and Environment bill. Nothing substantive in these bills has changed. Indeed, nothing substantive has yet changed anywhere in this process:

The government remains partially shut down;

The Senate is refusing to pass the bills my Democratic Party colleagues are proposing;

The President is refusing to sign them; and

The majority is proposing to fix the problem by passing the exact same bills.

To quote the great Yogi Bera: ``It is deja vu all over again.''

While I commend my friends in the majority for trying to reopen the government, let's be clear about what they are proposing. The four bills under consideration here represent only the Senate-passed versions of the bills covering the fiscal year 2019 appropriations process. They represent no input at all from the House, no input at all from the Appropriations Committee, and no input at all from the joint House and Senate conference committees that were appointed to iron out the differences between these bills and their House counterparts.

In essence, the Democrats' only plan is for the House to swallow the Senate's original bills, abrogate our authority and responsibility as a coequal House of Congress, and declare victory. What is more surprising is that my friends now expect that having tried this same thing before, they will now get a different result.

To be clear, last week, when the House passed these exact same bills, the Senate made it known these bills would not come to the floor; and even if they did, the President has made it known that he would not sign them. I don't know what they think is so different about this week over last to make my friends think that all they need to do is to pass them again and, magically, the Senate will pass these bills and the President will sign them.

Perhaps even more surprising, the majority now wishes to bring these four bills forward under a closed rule, with no opportunity for the House to amend them and no opportunity for Members to weigh in. As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I understand how hard it is to have a full process on appropriations bills. But it is, indeed, possible, even when funding bills carry over into a new year or even a new majority.

In 2011, right after Republicans took majority control of the House, we considered a bill on the floor to fund the entire Federal Government. We did it under an open rule, with only a preprinting requirement. When we considered that bill on the floor, 162 amendments were offered from both sides of the aisle, and we had a grand total of 66 hours of floor debate on the bill, stretching out over 5 days.

Given the amount of time we used in 2011, I fully understand what an undertaking that would be. But unless the majority believes that these bills will quickly pass the Senate and quickly be signed by the President into law, then there is plenty of time for thoughtful debate and plenty of time to hear ideas from all Members of this House. Instead, the majority has chosen to push forward with an appropriations strategy that they know cannot succeed.

Mr. Speaker, the House should be taking steps this week to negotiate with the Senate and the President to end this shutdown. That means that, whether the majority likes it or not, they need to engage on border security.

The American people have told us time and time again that they want action on border security. The solution they are proposing today does nothing on that front.

Even if we pass these bills today, and even if they, ultimately, became law, the border would remain unsecured and the Department of Homeland Security would remain shut down. Nothing the House will do in this package will change that essential fact, and nothing in this package is a step on the road to changing that essential fact.

Mr. Speaker, it wasn't always this way. In 2006, 64 Democrats joined Republicans in passing the Secure Fence Act, which President Bush signed into law. Those 64 Democrats then included 13 current Members now and one additional Member who has since gone on to the Senate. Even liberal lions of the House, like our good friend and former colleague Congressman Barney Frank, joined the Republicans in voting for border security. I am unclear what has changed, from then until now, that would cause the entire majority Caucus to refuse to work with Republicans on border security when so many did so back in 2006.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, while I agree with the good intentions of the majority in seeking to fund the government, their method of doing so is in no way sufficient. Instead of abrogating our own authority, embracing a Senate-only product that the President will not sign, and kicking the can down the road, we should be taking concrete steps to reopen the government, secure the border, and move on to the many important needs of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to make a couple of quick points, and then yield to another speaker, if I may.

Mr. Speaker, I want to disagree a little bit with my friend's memory on

what the last Congress did and did not do. Quite frankly, it was the most successful Congress in enacting appropriations bills in 22 years, 75 percent of them across the floor on time. We will see how good the record is as my friends are in the majority. And I am going to work with my friends on that, because I know it is the intention to do that, but it is no easy task.

To say that the last Congress didn't act when, in fact, it put a bill over in the United States Senate that the President would have signed is simply untrue. To suggest that Republicans controlled the Senate in this process, when a Democratic minority in the Senate kept us from getting to 60 votes, there is where your real obstruction was. Quite frankly, this problem would have never happened if the Senate chose to operate the way we do, by simple majority vote, and the President would have had a bill.

One last point, if I may. The President did offer to negotiate. The reports in the media are that he actually offered to reduce his request by half. That is normally, around here, considered a real negotiation: Let's split the difference and find the common ground.

My friends didn't choose to take up that offer. So the idea that they have somehow been innocent bystanders when they were in the minority, in a process out of control, simply misstates reality.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Washington (Mr. Newhouse), my good friend, a member of the Appropriations Committee, and a former member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and then I will yield to my good friend from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to take up the challenge. I would be happy to meet with anybody to reopen the government. I would be happy if we had a product in front of us, which we did have in late December that had actually been agreed to by the United States Senate.

Why my friends chose to just simply take the Senate bills--which I will assure you, are not nearly as good as the conference bills between the two bodies--and throw all of the work out that this body did over a year, the appropriators, and the rest of the authorizing committees that play a supplemental role in this, I will never know.

It would have been a lot harder to vote ``no'' than just simply sit here and strip 435 Members of their ability to legislate, which is effectively what my friends in the majority have chosen to do.

I hope going forward we can do exactly what my friend suggests. I would also suggest that the people he mentioned go meet with the President of the United States. He was here all December, happy to negotiate with anybody. He wasn't in Hawaii. He was here. He offered to split the difference. That was an unacceptable offer to my friends.

So if you want to negotiate, negotiate with the President. If you want to do something with the Senate, I would expect that you should probably sit down and talk to them because you are sending them something this week that you sent last week, that they didn't take up then, and they are not going to take up now.

So whenever we want to negotiate, I would be thrilled to be at the table, but I haven't seen any evidence that my friends do want to negotiate. Instead, they simply want to dictate. They simply want to dictate the outcome and achieve what they think is a political victory, and that is coming at the expense of the American people. Real negotiations mean sitting down and settling differences. It doesn't mean shooting paper back and forth across the rotunda.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Mitchell), my good friend and a distinguished Member.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to notify the body, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to report modified open rules for each bill before us today: H.R. 264, H.R. 265, H.R. 266, and H.R. 267. The rule would include a preprinting requirement.

Mr. Speaker, the bills before us today are simply nothing more than Senate products. House Democrats would rather try to win political points against the Senate than allow this House to do its job. Again, the Senate hasn't indicated they will take up these measures, and the President has not agreed to sign these measures. There is time to do this the right way.

In 2011, right after Republicans took the majority control of the House, the government was operating under a continuing resolution, and we considered a bill on the floor to fund the entire Federal Government, and we did it under one open rule with just a preprinting requirement.

There were a total of 66 hours of floor debate from the afternoon of February 15, 2011, to the early hours of February 19, including one stretch of debate that lasted 42 hours.

I do understand what an enormous undertaking it would be, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't and can't take the time.

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 urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was amused--and I actually mean this in very good spirit--when my friend mentioned how frequently he had been quoted in today's debate, and I have to say I consider my friend one of the great debaters in this Chamber, and I enjoy hearing him quoted on the floor of the House. So I accept that, and I hope the gentleman knows it was a compliment to him in many ways.

I also want to tell him--and I mean this very seriously--I take him at his word. I don't have any doubt my friend wants to operate differently than we have operated in the past and that he wants this institution to be more open to inclusion of various points of view and very sincere debate, and I pledge to my friend I will work with him in that endeavor.

Now, it is hard to resist pointing out the gentleman's first six bills have all been under closed rules. I suspect we will continue to point that out until we have an opportunity to say to my good friend-- and I think we will in the very near future--``Congratulations, you are following through on the things that you said.'' Again, I know my friend will do that at what he considers and the majority considers the appropriate time.

We have a lot of discussion, Mr. Speaker, about who did and didn't do their jobs in the last Congress. I would tell you, in my view, that the House did its job. It passed its bills. It sent to the Senate a product that the President would sign.

Mr. Speaker, I would tell you, you are doing your job here, as well, right now in the majority. You passed bills last week. You sent them over to the United States Senate.

In our case, the minority in the Senate blocked consideration of our bills. Had those bills been placed on the floor, we wouldn't be here today. They would have all passed. They had majority support in the Senate; they had a President willing to sign them; and they had already passed the House.

The only reason why we are here today is because the Democratic minority in the Senate manipulated the rules of the Senate in such a way that they could stop action. I suspect we all have had frustration with that as House Members in the past. I think we will again in the future.

I also want to reflect with my friends, and I draw this conclusion not so much out of their actions, but actions that my own party, from time to time, has committed, and I suspect I will say this to this Chamber many times: Pursuit of absolute victory in domestic political disputes is always a mistake. It always leaves a divided country and an embittered opponent, and you will rue the day when you pursue it. We have certainly done that, Mr. Speaker, on my side of the aisle.

I think that, to some degree, though, is what is going on today. Sooner or later--and we are going to live with a Republican Senate for the next 2 years and a Republican President for the next 2 years--my friends in the majority will have to decide whether they want to govern or debate, because that is all we are doing now.

Mr. Speaker, you are not the opposition party anymore. You are the majority party, and you have every right to pursue your agenda. But if you really want to govern, if you really want to get something done, in the end, you are going to have to work with the Republican Senate, and you are going to have to work with the Republican President.

We learned that hard reality when we were in the majority but dealing with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic President in 2011 through 2014. I hope my friends learn the lesson more quickly and become wiser than we were. I hope they benefit from our experience.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to this rule and the underlying measure. The majority today is putting forward a closed rule to bring up four appropriations bills, each of which the House has already passed last week.

But, unfortunately, each of these bills is not a product of the House of Representatives. These bills are Senate products that do not reflect any House input. What is worse, they do not solve the fundamental problem of border security, and they do not represent a serious effort to reopen the government.

Since the Senate will not pass these bills and the President will not sign them, all we are accomplishing here today is spinning our wheels. The majority would be better served to undertake serious negotiations with the President and the Senate over the need for border security and to find a way out of the crisis of their own making rather than hoping that something will be different this time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' on the previous question, ``no'' on the underlying measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 226) to amend the Small Business Act to include best in class designations in the annual report on small business goals prepared by the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the measure under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, H.R. 226, the Clarity on Small Business Participation in Category Management Act of 2019.

Let me begin by welcoming back Ranking Member Chabot to this new Congress. I have been privileged to serve on the Small Business Committee for two decades and appreciate the relationship the ranking member and I have cultivated. I look forward to working with him on this bill and others as we remain steadfast in our efforts to ensure small businesses have the resources to thrive now and in the future.

Our committee has long acknowledged small businesses' critical role in the $500 billion a year Federal marketplace. When small firms are awarded Federal contracts, the result is a win-win.

Category management is believed by some to be the best strategy to get agencies the lowest price, but my committee has heard otherwise, and the data backs this up. Small contractors on the multiple award schedule consistently provide lower prices to agencies than those offered through category management.

Despite this, agencies have increased the use of category management, which not just increases costs to the Federal Government but also limits contracts to small vendors. In our committee hearings last year, we heard that more and more contracts are being consolidated and put out of the reach of small businesses as a result of category management.

This bill is a commonsense first step to address the need of small vendors, particularly minority-, women-, and veteran-owned small businesses, to remain competitors in the Federal marketplace. By requiring that contracting activity under this new regime of category management be reported in the annual goaling report from agencies to Congress, today's bill protects the industrial base by creating a mechanism for much-needed accountability.

H.R. 226 gives us the ability to analyze the data so that we can truly understand the role category management is playing in the marketplace and make changes accordingly.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to offer this bill to provide accountability to the category management regime. I urge Members to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. Speaker, let me just respond to the gentleman's comment regarding the shutdown. The fact of the matter is that the President campaigned and told the American people that he will build a wall and that it will be paid for by the Government of Mexico, and that is not what he is telling us now.

Besides, this is the President's shutdown, and he was very proud when he made that comment to Speaker Pelosi and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of this important legislation to provide much-needed oversight of small business participation in the streamlined acquisition strategy known as category management.

H.R. 226 requires that contracting activity under this new regime be reported in the annual goaling report from agencies to Congress. This data would allow us to better understand how small firms fare under this new system and make adjustments if needed to guarantee an equitable playing field.

This bill protects the small business industrial base by giving a mechanism for much-needed accountability. It is supported by the National Small Business Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Electrical Contractors Association, which is the voice of the $171 billion electrical construction industry.

I thank the ranking member for his support of H.R. 226, and I remain committed to ensuring small firms are competitive within the Federal marketplace.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 226, the Clarity on Small Business Participation in Category Management Act of 2019.

I thank Chairwoman Velazquez for working with us in a bipartisan manner on this bill, as we have done over the years on a whole range of other bills, whether the Democrats are in the majority or the Republicans are in the majority. On this committee, Ms. Velazquez and I have been able to work in a bipartisan manner, and we appreciate that very much on this bill and many other things as well.

Category management is a procurement initiative that is being adopted across the Federal Government. If implemented properly, it can be a beneficial tool, allowing the government to better understand its purchasing habits and identify cost savings, where appropriate.

However, as we discovered in a full committee hearing that we held on this topic last Congress, setting mandatory targets to manage agency spending may result in unintended consequences that could impact the small business industrial base.

Specifically, this initiative may inadvertently reduce competition to only a few vendors and may discourage new and emerging small businesses from entering the Federal marketplace.

As a result, we may see a decrease in competition and an exodus of small businesses from the Federal contracting base. We should ensure that maximum opportunities are given to small businesses as we continue to pursue cost savings across the Federal Government.

While I applaud the administration's efforts to reduce waste and identify areas where savings could be achieved, when we do so, we should try to avoid harming small businesses whenever possible.

H.R. 226 takes a first step toward assessing the impacts of category management on small businesses by requiring the Small Business Administration to report exactly how much is awarded to small businesses through the best in class contracts. Establishing this baseline and regularly monitoring these numbers is critical.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, before I address just some final points about this bill, I have to respond a bit to the gentleman from Mississippi relative to the shutdown, which we all hope will be resolved as soon as possible.

I don't think anybody in this body wants portions of the government to shut down and people not to be paid during that period of time. Hopefully, they will be paid in the future, but we don't necessarily want to pay people for not working, because we don't want them not to be working in the first place. So we need to get the government back open.

That being said, at this point, there is a standoff because the President and many Members in this body and in the other body believe that it is time for us to enhance our border security, and that is one of the principal issues right now and why the government is not open completely. Most of the government is open. It is a relatively small portion. However, any portion of the government that is closed is too much.

But we do have folks who have been coming across illegally at our southern border, and many believe that we do need to enhance the security at that border. Part of that is a wall, or barrier, or substantial fencing, or one thing or another--whatever you want to call it--and we need do that. We owe it to the American people to do that. So with that being said, I will just leave it there.

Mr. Speaker, I do believe that we ought to be looking to save taxpayer dollars in the procurement process, and category management may be a tool to do just that. However, we must maintain a vibrant industrial base that has a healthy and growing population of small firms to increase competition, spur innovation, and drive down costs.

This commonsense bill increases oversight on the administration's efforts to streamline the procurement process and aims to ensure small firms are not harmed in that process.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman has to recognize the irony, how, despite 2 years of claiming that he wants open rules, the Democrat rule package talking about regular order, and here we have a closed rule for advancing these bills.

The gentleman talks about the most closed Congress was the 115th Congress. I will wait and see if the gentleman's side in leading Congress' score is better than the 115th Congress was. It would be interesting to keep that scorecard.

In the past, I have supported bills like these, especially appropriations bills for agriculture, transportation, housing, and urban development.

On the whole, the agriculture bill has priorities that are critical to my district, including the farm safety net, rural broadband, food safety, and more. However, I can't support these bills because they are offered in bad faith. It is a charade. Let's be honest. It is simply a charade. It is not a serious attempt to fund agriculture or any other priorities in my district or in this country.

It is, in fact, distract and delay in order to put pressure on, to squeeze the American people to get what you want.

It is madness, I will agree with you. It is madnes where we are going right now because 17,000 people with criminal convictions were stopped at the United States southern border last year.

That doesn't count the ones we didn't catch because they came in in other ways. Yet, somehow, we want to ignore that rather than worry about our border security. Without borders, without secure borders, we are not a country.

The President, the administration offered a package. My colleague on the other side of the aisle, Mr. McGovern, I want him to see this letter. I assure you, Mr. Speaker, you have it. It talks about the priorities of the administration.

It talks about funding, yes, for a wall or barrier for 234 miles. Only 234 miles, not the 2,000 miles suddenly people are talking about, which is a top 10 priority of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in order to funnel people crossing the border to entry points.

It talks about additional immigration judges. It provides funding for additional border patrol. It provides funding for infrastructure at the borders--many things the other side of the aisle was talking about. So why is it, that rather than going to the White House, closing the door, and not coming out until you come up with an answer, there is a press conference being held in the Rayburn Reception Room where once more we talk about, well, we are not doing anything.

If you want to reopen the government, go to the White House, close the door, and don't come back here until we have a deal. A deal requires all parties. These bills will not be taken up in the Senate. The President said he will veto them.

Negotiation, I spent 35 years in private business, and negotiation means you never get everything you want, but you walk away where all parties say: We could have gotten a little more. But you solve the problem rather than put people at risk.

We are putting people at risk in this country. People won't get paid Friday. You are right. We are also putting the American people at risk by not securing our border. We have kicked that can down the road my entire time I have been here, 2 years now, and long before that.

One final point: We know that Democrats previously have supported funding for border walls, border security, and a border fence. Call it what you want.

Mr. Speaker, so why is it now we can't simply agree that we need to do more to secure our border along the lines of this, including 234 miles of wall, only because the President's name is on it?

Come on, let's solve the problem. Let's be adults here.