CAFE Standards Repeal Act of 2019

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 431 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), 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 within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, H.R. 431, providing for consideration of H.R. 2740, making appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2020, and for other purposes, and H. Res. 430, authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and, also, for other purposes.

The rule provides for consideration of H.R. 2740 under a structured rule, self-executes Chairwoman Lowey's manager's amendment, and makes in order 106 different amendments.

The rule provides 1 hour of general debate, equally and divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, and provides that they may offer up to 15 pro forma amendments, each for the purposes of debate.

The chair of the Appropriations Committee may also offer amendments en bloc consisting of amendments made in order by the rule and not earlier disposed of.

Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of H. Res. 430 under a closed rule, with 1 hour of debate equally and divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, this rule pairs two bills which demonstrate the commitment of the House majority both to making strong progress for the American people in the areas of health, labor, and education, at the same time that we defend the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law against the obstructionism and the lawlessness of the executive branch of government.

Let's start with H.R. 2740, which is designed to make government work for our people. It provides $189.9 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Labor, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

It increases investment in the National Institutes of Health, our country's preeminent medical research agency, a national treasure, which is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in my district, to support research for Alzheimer's disease, HIV/Aids, breast cancer, colon cancer, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, childhood cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, mental health, suicide prevention, and the Cancer Moonshot initiative.

The people of NIH and their network of allied entities and agencies and supported universities and research labs across the country are making profound progress in the struggle to uplift the health of the people against all of the killer diseases of our time.

And for the first time in more than 20 years, this bill contains funding to support gun violence and firearm injury prevention research, and we are proud of that.

This legislation increases funding for Department of Education programs to help America's children succeed, providing critical resources for elementary and secondary schools, special ed programs, and Federal student aid. Importantly, the bill increases the maximum Pell grant to help America's college and graduate students keep pace with inflation and the high cost of living.

H.R. 2740 also provides $56.4 billion in funding for the State Department, USAID, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. We are making major strategic investments in diplomacy, global health, and international basic education, the crucial ingredients for maintaining peace and security around the world.

This legislation provides essential humanitarian assistance and critical funding to improve maternal and child health, to fight diseases like malaria, and to support women's reproductive health and literacy across the globe. We know that the key to improving social and economic development around the world is the education of women and the investment in family planning programs and literacy about procreation.

This legislation renews our Nation's commitment to addressing the climate crisis by investing in directives on adaption and renewable energy. It also prohibits the use of any government funds to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.

Now, on the other legislation, which deals with contempt, Mr. Speaker, we know from Special Counsel Mueller's report that there was a sweeping and systematic assault on America's elections in 2016. There was a conscious effort and plan by Vladimir Putin and the GRU to undermine and destabilize the American elections by interfering and hacking into the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Hillary Clinton's offices to inject poisonous ideological propaganda into the body politic of America through Facebook, through Twitter, through YouTube and other social media entities and then to directly hack into the State boards of election.

The Department of Justice launched a special counsel inquiry. It was a Republican Attorney General who named a Republican special counsel, Mr. Mueller, to do it.

The President of the United States, according to Special Counsel Mueller's report, engaged in at least 10 different episodes of efforts to interfere with that investigation, to obstruct justice. We received that report a couple of months ago from the special counsel.

In the aftermath of it, President Trump said, ``We are fighting all subpoenas,'' and declared that there would be no cooperation from the executive branch with legislative branch subpoenas, with our demands for documents, with our demands for witnesses, with our demands for testimony from the executive branch. He said: ``I don't want people testifying,'' and, ``There is no reason to go any further.'' And since then, they have drawn a curtain down over the executive branch of government and defied the lawful orders of the Congress of the United States.

The Trump administration is stonewalling, from pillar to post, congressional investigations, defying validly issued congressional subpoenas. So, for example, Attorney General Barr is refusing to produce the full unredacted Mueller report and the related underlying evidence to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Every other independent special counsel had simply turned their report over to Congress and Congress did the redactions, but Attorney General Barr engaged in a series of games with the Congress of the United States and confused the American public, as Special Counsel Mueller complained in a letter that he sent to the Attorney General.

He is also defying a House Intelligence Committee subpoena directing him to turn over documents and materials related to Special Counsel Mueller's investigation, including all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials produced during the investigation.

Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, has defied a subpoena issued by the House Committee on the Judiciary without any substantial legal basis at all.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is defying a subpoena from the House Ways and Means Committee directing him to produce the President's tax returns under a statute that makes it crystal clear that Congress has a right to obtain the tax returns of the President or any other citizen of the United States.

Commerce Secretary Ross and Attorney General William Barr are refusing to comply with duly authorized bipartisan subpoenas from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating the administration's shadowy and illicit efforts to add an illegitimate citizenship question to the 2020 Census completely outside of the Administrative Procedures Act process. Several District Courts have struck that down. But, in any event, the administration is refusing to turn over evidence, relevant evidence, to Congress about this effort to impose the citizenship question on the census.

The administration is refusing to turn over documents, witnesses, and testimony relating to the corruption of the security clearance process in the White House personnel office.

There were 25 different individuals who were denied a security clearance by the professional staff in the White House personnel office, who were then overruled by President Trump or political appointees. We are trying to get information as to what was the basis for the original denial. It was, likely, conflict with foreign governments or financial conflicts of interest. It might also have been drug or alcohol problems. But we want to get the details of each one, and then we want to know if there is any written documentation of why the President and his subordinates overturned those.

In all of these cases, Mr. Speaker, the executive branch of government has followed President Trump's orders to say, simply: We are not going to turn anything over to Congress.

Now, understand, the Supreme Court of the United States has held that it is an essential and integral aspect of legislative power to engage in investigation and factfinding. That is how the people's Representatives are able to legislate: We are able to get information. But if you shut down our ability to get information, we cannot engage in lawmaking. For that reason, we have begun to win in all of these Federal District Court cases where we are going out to try to get this information.

But, Mr. Speaker, we cannot tie up the floor of the House of Representatives every time the executive branch decides to follow the order of the President and simply deny us the information that we seek.

My friends across the aisle know from the Fast and Furious investigation, the Hillary Clinton email investigation, the Benghazi investigation it is Congress' right to investigate and to obtain the documents that it wants. They obtained millions of documents

in those investigations. We had a right to get them then, and we have a right to get all of these documents now.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation will give the power, first of all, to the Committee on the Judiciary to follow through on the subpoenas that it has issued. It will also empower and authorize each chair of the House of Representatives to enforce their lawful subpoenas that are being dishonored and violated by the executive branch of government.

So we are very proud to bring forward these two pieces of legislation, one which makes good on our commitment to the American people to continue to make progress in the fields of education, healthcare, labor, and scientific and medical research while, at the same time, we defend the Constitution, the rule of law, the prerogatives and powers of Congress against the lawlessness and the obstructionism of this administration.

We are the preeminent and primary branch of government. The very first sentence of the Constitution, Mr. Speaker: ``We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.''

The second sentence that follows is all legislative power is vested in the Congress of the United States.

The sovereign power of the people comes right through the preamble into Article I, establishing us as the representatives of the people. Then you get dozens of paragraphs setting forth all the powers of Congress: to declare war, to raise revenues, to write budgets, to impeach the President or other executive branch officials who commit high crimes and misdemeanors and to remove them in the Senate, to set up a post office, to govern the seat of government, and to establish a capital city. Those are the prerogatives and powers of Congress.

Then you get to Article II, and Article II fixes the powers of the President. What are the President's core responsibilities? To take care that the laws are faithfully executed. That is the President's job: to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

It is even in Article II that the President can be impeached, in Section 4.

Just to make it clear, the President works for the Congress; the Congress doesn't work for the President. And we, the Congress, work for the people.

That is what it means to have a representative democracy. We work for the people.

Now, we have a President who is in an unprecedented, wholesale, categorical defiance of the powers of Congress by denying us the information that we seek to obtain, which is our right and which is our need.

We are going to get it, and we are going to get it by empowering Congress to go to court to enforce our subpoenas.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear from my friend from Oklahoma about both of these bills. We were here together last night until around midnight, working on the rules for these bills.

On H.R. 2740, the appropriations package that we have together, we have authorized more than 100--I think the number is 112--bipartisan amendments. In fact, I think the first amendment is one that is from the gentleman from Oklahoma. We have made that first.

I won't be voting for it. I won't be supporting it, but he has the opportunity to make his case on the floor of the House of Representatives and to present it to colleagues.

We are proud of the fact that there are more than 100 amendments. In fact, I think we are meeting again this afternoon, and we might adopt dozens more amendments, for the consideration of the full House.

But on the question of H. Res. 430, which is to empower the Judiciary Committee and the other committees in Congress to enforce our right to obtain information that we seek, I think that this should be an overriding, bipartisan commitment within the Article I branch, within the Congress of the United States.

We simply cannot tolerate a posture from the President of the United States--and it is hard for me to think of any other Congress that would tolerate it from any other President--of noncooperation and absolute, comprehensive, and wholesale defiance of the will of Congress in trying to seek information.

My good friend from Oklahoma says that the President does not work to enforce the laws of Congress; he works for the people. Well, we all work for the people. That was my point. His job is to take care that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed. We work directly for the people.

At least until we get a national popular vote for President, the President is not elected by the people, as we know from the 2016 election itself where the popular vote winner, who gained several million more votes than Donald Trump did, lost the election because of the workings of the electoral college.

The Presidency was set up as an indirect mechanism, and that is something that I think that we should be replacing. But I think it is not appropriate to claim a popular mandate for the President when the President emerges from the electoral college.

In any event, the President's job is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed and also to be the Commander in Chief in times of actual conflict, but it is up to Congress to legislate. That is what we do. That is why it is so problematic when the President of the United States says:

I will not accept a bipartisan congressional rejection of

billions of dollars in funding for my border wall; I am going

to declare a national emergency and then reprogram money from

other lawfully appropriated purposes.

That is a violation of the spending power of the Congress of the United States. It is just like the President rejecting a bipartisan repudiation of his involvement with the Saudi Government in the Yemeni civil war. We have not declared war with Saudi Arabia against Iran or anybody else in the Yemeni conflict, and so we don't want to be involved in it. We don't want our money going to that bloody humanitarian catastrophe, and yet the President simply rejects the majority will of both Houses of Congress. That is a decisive rejection in defiance of Congress' power to declare war.

Now what we are getting is this complete defiance of our ability to get the information that we need. The President said it very clearly. He basically said: No subpoenas, no witnesses--enough--and no do-overs.

So he is not going to allow us to investigate the compromised security

clearance process and the White House is not going to allow us to investigate the completely suspect corruption and distortion of the constitutional mandate for a Census which we have got to do by virtue of the Constitution every 10 years, and he is not going to cooperate with any investigation into the matters that were covered by Special Counsel Mueller; the organized, systematic comprehensive, sweeping attack on our elections by the GRU and Russian agents or the more than 100 contacts they had with the Trump campaign or the 10 different episodes of Presidential obstruction of justice that were set forth by Special Counsel Mueller in his report.

We can't accept that. So this legislation in H.R. 430 will give us the opportunity to go to court right away to enforce our subpoenas against this unprecedented defiance of congressional power by the President of the United States.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, all of us, of course, embrace and uphold the First Amendment and the rights of religious freedom, the right to not have government establish a religion and to participate in the free exercise of religion and to worship or to not worship exactly as you please. There is nothing in any of our legislation that would interfere with anybody's right to exercise precisely their religious preference to worship exactly as they please and to belong to whatever religious faith or denomination they want.

I am not quite sure exactly what the gentleman was referring to. We know that the idea of a religious freedom to discriminate has been asserted ever since the 1960s with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 where the hotel and motel, lunch counter and department store owners said that they had a religious right to only serve the customers that they wanted and that it violated their religious faith to have interracial parties seated in restaurants or at the lunch counter. Our Supreme Court rejected that, and this Congress has rejected that.

There have been similar efforts to say we have a constitutional right not to serve gay and lesbian customers. That has been rejected, and I hope that this Congress will also reject it.

We passed the Equality Act very proudly to add protection for LGBT people to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and I hope that the Senate will go along with it.

In any event, there is nothing in any of the legislation before us and none has been cited which violates any of the free exercise rights of the people. So with that, unless I hear anything further, I am not moved by how anybody is affected by this appropriation negatively.

My other good friend from Oklahoma referenced the phrase checks and balances, and that does appear in the Federalist Papers. I think it is in Federalist 51. It actually refers to the relationship between the House and the Senate. That was the design of the Framers of the Constitution that the House and the Senate would check and balance each other. But the Framers were very clear that we were overthrowing monarchy. We didn't want monarchy. That is why we got rid of the king. The revolutionaries and the rebels who gave us America and who wrote the Constitution were trying to institute a new form of government representing We the People. That is why we are so proud to be able to serve in the people's House here along with our friends in the Senate.

But the President's core job is to take care that our laws are faithfully executed. We have no kings here; we have no monarchs here. That is why we have the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution which says that none of us who serves in Washington can accept any present-- any emoluments, which just means a payment--any office or title from a prince, a king, or a foreign government without the consent of Congress.

That is a cardinal principle in the Constitution. It is our original anti-corruption principle because the Framers did not want the President or Members of Congress selling out the country. They wanted complete, undivided loyalty by those of us who come to Washington, who aspire and obtain the public office to have complete, undivided loyalty to the American people and not to lobbyists for foreign governments, agents, and saboteurs.

So that is another real problem that this President seems not to recognize. That provision obligates him whenever he receives any money from a foreign government through his hotel or his office towers or any of his going businesses that he has kept going in the course of his tenure, whenever he receives any of that money, he has got to come to Congress to ask for our permission and for our consent.

Mr. Speaker, we can show you records from lots of prior Presidents who came to Congress to ask for a consent because they received a Persian rug, or a shawl, or cufflinks. Yet--at least according to court reports and media reports--this President has been receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars from foreign governments. In fact, the President I think made a voluntary deposit he said of the profits from foreign government receipts of $350,000 to the U.S. Treasury without any accounting to us, without any receipts, and without asking for our consent.

So even if the Constitution says that you can't accept the profits from foreign payments, which it doesn't, it says you can't accept foreign payments. That would be insufficient because Congress has got to offer its consent.

Look, we need to lay down the law about all of these matters. When we ask for a document, we want the document. When we issue a subpoena from the United States Congress, you comply with the subpoena. When we ask for

a witness, the witness arrives. That is what H.R. 430 is all about. We have got to empower Congress to enforce its will.

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

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

I still have not heard a single instance offered from anybody whose religious freedoms under the Constitution of the United States are threatened by any of the legislation here.

I do know that the ultimate logic of the argument that we just heard here is to support legislation like what was just passed in the State of Alabama. In Alabama today--please read an article in the Washington Post this morning, Mr. Speaker--in Alabama today if this legislation is signed into law, a 15-year-old girl who is raped by her step-uncle not only would not be able to obtain an abortion, because there is no exception for rape or incest in the ban that the legislature just passed, but she would be compelled to have him involved in the raising of the child because Alabama protects the paternity rights of the rapist. So it is one of only two States in the country where a rapist continues to have parenthood rights in the child.

So get this straight. If what we are hearing is actually enacted into law--and I understand my colleagues to be encouraging legislation like this around the country, like the law in Alabama--we will have a situation where girls who are 15 or 14 or 13 or 16 years old who are raped by their stepfathers or step-uncles must carry a child to term, have the baby, and in some States be forced to raise the baby with the rapist.

So I don't think that is where we are today in America under Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade, and certainly the majority is going to stand very strong for healthcare for women and reproductive freedom for women and men to make their own decisions.

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

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

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

It is a pleasure to work with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole) on H.R. 2740 and H.R. 4340, and I do urge all of our colleagues to support this rule for this legislation.

I do hope my friend from Oklahoma will tutor some of his colleagues, like the last speaker, who referred to the ``Democrat majority.'' Democrat is the noun. Democratic is the adjective for our party, and I think that would be a basic gesture of interparty civility if they would follow that fairly easy grammatical device.

Mr. Speaker, one of the other Members from the other side, I think from Oklahoma, talked about some education matters, so I want to go to some statistics that actually mean something to the American people. I think we can refute all of the statistics that were advanced by my friend from Oklahoma, as I said.

There are more than 100 amendments that we are going to be bringing up today, and we are going to be adding more of them, and we certainly don't want to endure lectures from people who belong to the caucus that ran the most closed Congress in the history of the United States.

But here are some figures that actually mean something to the American people. Our bill provides a total of $75.9 billion in appropriations for the Education Department, which is $4.5 billion above the 2019-enacted level, and $11.9 billion beyond what the President asked for. So that means dramatic increases in everything from IDEA special education spending, to education, innovation, and research programs, to spending for teacher professional development evidence-based models and so on.

We are also increasing money for student financial assistance for Pell Grants for higher education, because it has become too difficult for our young people to make their way through college, and they are graduating, basically, with a mortgage of 100 or $150,000, but they don't have a house to go with it. So this majority is committed to alleviating the burden on America's college students.

Mr. Speaker, we are trying to make progress, under very difficult circumstances with this President, for the American people in the realm of education, healthcare, scientific and medical research. We are making that progress, and I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I hadn't had this in the opening, but I want to disagree with my friend right off the top. The President of the United States does not work for the Congress of the United States. He works for the American people, and he heads up a branch of government that is a coequal branch of government. So, on that, we will have a long discussion.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a very eventful week in the Rules Committee, and it is only Tuesday. Last night, the committee met and reported out a rule that covers two drastically different measures. H.R. 2740 is an appropriations package that covered first 5 and then 4 of the 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2020. We also considered H. Res. 430, a resolution that gives authority to the Office of the General Counsel of the House of Representatives to seek to enforce certain subpoenas for documents through litigation.

Shortly after we finish here, the committee will again convene to consider the remainder of the appropriations package, which will be on the floor as part of a separate rule tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our Members will attempt the miracle of being in two places at once as we continue to debate H. Res. 430, which falls into our original jurisdiction here on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 430 comes from a dispute over documents relating to the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The dispute also stems from the inherent oversight authority of Congress and our ability to perform oversight functions over the executive branch. It falls into the fuzzy boundaries between the branches of governments as to when and how we may compel the executive branch to turn over documents to the legislative branch.

I lay out that framework because there is an important point here that is being lost. The Democratic majority clearly wants to make this dispute entirely about this President, this Attorney General, this White House counsel, this investigation, this subpoena of documents. The Democrats want to focus attention there because they think it helps them politically to do so. But this dispute really shouldn't be about just that. It should, rather, be about the difficult and thorny questions that emerge in a system like ours with three branches of government with checks and balances.

In a sense, what the majority is seeking to do here today is completely unprecedented, both in its intent and in its execution. Consider the only other times the House has filed a lawsuit to seek to enforce a subpoena for documents. It has happened twice before, Mr. Speaker, once in 2007, to seek documents from former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and again in 2012, to seek documents from then- Attorney General Eric Holder as a result of the congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal.

In both of these cases, the House had already voted to hold both Miers and Holder in contempt of Congress before filing suit, which has not yet happened in this case. In the Miers case, 138 days elapsed from the first document request to the Judiciary Committee voting to hold her in contempt. In the Holder case, it was significantly longer, in that 464 days elapsed from the first document request to the committee voting to hold him in contempt. That was well over a year.

Here, the majority is forcing us to rush forward at a much faster pace. Just 44 days elapsed from the date of the first document request to the Attorney General until the Judiciary Committee voted to hold him in contempt. James Holzhauer has been champion of ``Jeopardy!'' for longer than that.

I don't understand the majority's haste here. Without exhausting all other options--continuing negotiation, discussion, compromise, and turning to a vote on contempt as the last resort--the majority is, instead, pushing this forward into litigation with the executive branch. In doing so, they may well be placing the House in a position that causes significant long-term damage to the institution.

When this matter goes before the courts, it will do so as a case of first impression and under an untested legal theory. In both the Miers and Holder cases, the House previously voted to hold those two individuals in contempt of Congress. Nothing like that has been done here. Using untested tactics like this could set a dangerous precedent that harms us all, Republicans and Democrats, in the long run.

Finally, I would also note that it is not clear what this resolution will ultimately accomplish. Since the House has not yet exercised all the tools in its tool kit, and since it is not clear that the negotiations with the Justice Department and the White House over the documents at issue are at an end, this whole thing may be nothing more than sound and fury. Indeed, given how quickly the majority is rushing into things, it seems unlikely that the only course of action left in the House is to file a lawsuit.

I strongly urge the majority to continue working with the Justice Department and the White House to find a resolution to these issues without resorting to knee-jerk lawsuits that may ultimately damage the House as an institution.

Today, we are also beginning consideration of H.R. 2740, an appropriations package covering 5 of 12 appropriations bills: Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Legislative Branch; Defense; State and Foreign Operations; and Energy and Water Development. These five bills cover over 70 percent of our total discretionary spending for fiscal year 2020.

To be precise, Mr. Speaker, we were to do five bills. At the last moment, the majority pulled the Legislative Branch appropriations bill. I will let them explain why at their leisure.

As a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, I am pleased that we are beginning to move the appropriations bills to the floor. Unfortunately, the bills before us have numerous flaws, most notably that they are marked to allocation levels that aren't realistic.

As we move forward through the appropriations process, I think we need to be clear about the challenges we face this year.

At the end of September, fiscal year 2019 expires, and sequestration cuts contained in the Budget Control Act of 2011 will automatically take effect for fiscal year 2020. In order to prevent that, we need to come to a bipartisan, bicameral budget deal that the House, the Senate, and the President can all agree on. If we don't, then it doesn't really matter what fake number the House marks to. Sequestration will hit, and our defense budget will automatically be slashed by 11 percent and our nondefense budget by 9 percent below the allocations of 2019.

The spending levels in these appropriations bills are not just ambitious; they are unrealistic. Not only are the funding levels for many of these bills too high, so high that the Senate and the President will never agree to them, but the allocations the Appropriations Committee used reflect the misguided notion that any increase in defense spending must be matched by an increase in nondefense spending that is more than twice as high.

That is simply not a realistic assessment of our national priorities or the fiscal limitations imposed on us by our rising national debt. The defense provision of this bill, for example, comes in at $8 billion less than the President told us was needed to adequately fund the military, maintain readiness, and be prepared to confront international threats.

After years of severe underfunding of our Armed Forces and at a time when threats are emerging everywhere around the globe, spending less than the administration asks for on defense in order to push more money into domestic programs is not a wise course of action.

I am disappointed that the majority chose to strip out pro-life provisions that have been carried in appropriations bills for years. Instead, they added controversial pro-abortion riders that virtually guarantee no Republican support whatsoever for this package.

As the former chair and current ranking member of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, I am familiar with the need for compromise on that particular piece of legislation. But by pushing forward with blatantly partisan riders like these, the majority is guaranteeing the outcome of these bills: dead on arrival in a Republican-led Senate and no chance of getting a Republican President's signature.

In the coming months, I hope we work through these problems, as we did last year, frankly. If the majority intends to move forward with unrealistic spending levels and insists on maintaining partisan riders, then we are simply guaranteeing a failed appropriations process.

Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, our failure has consequences. A best- case scenario is a yearlong continuing resolution that funds the government at the exact same level as the current year. That is the best scenario if we fail. The worst-case scenario is another government shutdown or sequestration that automatically cuts all government funding levels. Neither of these is a good outcome for the House as an institution, for the Federal Government, or more importantly, for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, although I cannot support either bill before us today, I am hopeful that, eventually, we will reach a bipartisan, bicameral compromise on spending that the vast majority of Members in this House can support. That requires realistic funding levels and elimination of partisan riders from this package. The spending package before us today may be a worthy starting point, but it will take hard work and compromise to move the final bill that can become law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Oklahoma (Mr. Kevin Hern).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith). My good friend is the most eloquent advocate for life in this Chamber.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gonzalez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Smucker).

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule immediately to bring up H.R. 3056 for consideration under an open rule.

The bill provides $4.5 billion of funding to address the immediate humanitarian crisis on the southern border. This is a crisis of significant proportions, Mr. Speaker.

Our facilities for holding new arrivals, particularly children and the vulnerable unaccompanied minors, are already at the breaking point. Simply put, we need more resources, and we need them today.

This is not the first time we have needed to provide supplemental appropriations for this purpose. Back in 2014, then-President Barack Obama asked us for $3.7 billion in supplemental resources for precisely the same purpose. He got it. At the time, we had 60,000 unaccompanied minors who arrived in 2014. We face a similar and, frankly, larger humanitarian crisis today.

President Obama was right to request supplemental funds to deal with the crisis then. We would be right to appropriate supplemental funds to address that similar crisis now.

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 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Rogers).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend made reference a little bit earlier to amendments. He talked about the total number of amendments, but he left out the distribution of amendments. So, as the House considers this rule, I think we ought to take a look at how the Rules Committee has handled making amendments in order so far this Congress.

The rule on the floor today is making 106 amendments in order, out of 540 submitted, with hopefully more to come with tomorrow's rule.

Today's rule includes 22 amendments sponsored solely by Republicans. Sadly, this is considered an improvement over the majority's previous efforts.

With today's rule, in total, this Congress, 73 percent of all amendments made in order have been sponsored solely by Democrats--73 percent. Just 16 percent are sponsored by Republicans, with 11 percent bipartisan.

How does this compare with the last Congress? When Republicans were the majority party, 45 percent of all amendments made in order were sponsored solely by Democrats. Only 38 percent were sponsored solely by Republicans, with another 17 percent being bipartisan.

At the beginning of this Congress, the Democratic majority repeatedly promised a new, robust, and open process at the Rules Committee. They pledged that good ideas would be welcomed, no matter where they came from, and that thoughtful amendments would not be blocked.

Unfortunately, they have a long way to go to keep that promise. I think the numbers speak volumes.

We are 5 months into the 116th Congress. Should we expect this trend of shutting out minority party ideas to continue? Should we expect the same course of action in our rule tomorrow and in our rule on the second appropriations package next week and in

other rules in the weeks and months to come?

When will the promises made by the Democratic majority be kept? If not now, when?

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge opposition to the rule. The rule will make in order two measures: H. Res. 430 and H.R. 2740.

H. Res. 430 is a premature and ineffective resolution that will push the House forward into untested and ill-timed litigation with the executive branch over the subpoena of documents. While the House has an important oversight role to play, we must be careful to exercise that role wisely and carefully, lest we cause long-term damage to the institution.

H.R. 2740 is a package of 5 of the 12 outstanding appropriations bills that use unrealistic allocation levels and eliminate longstanding pro-life protections that must be restored before these bills can garner any Republican support.

I actually look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and the Senate as we move forward in the appropriations process, and I urge the majority to compromise with the Senate and the White House in order to achieve a final spending deal that avoids drastic sequestration cuts or, worse yet, another government shutdown.

I think that is actually the great lesson of the appropriations process, Mr. Speaker. We know we can do this. We did it last year, and we did it pretty well together.

But my friends have to get past the idea that they can impose their will on a Republican Senate and a Republican President. They are simply not going to be able to do that. They are going to have to bargain to a middle ground and compromise.

In the Appropriations Committee, as a rule, we do that, and we do it pretty well. I am hopeful that we can continue going forward on that front.

I am concerned, however, that the vitriol, if you will, that we see in the investigative and oversight efforts of our friends will spill into that process and lead us into a very difficult situation in September.

So, as we move forward on the appropriations front, again, I hope all of us relearn the virtues of compromise, understand that we were all sent here by the American people, that we have to work with one another to accomplish something, and that none of us can impose their will on the other.

With that, I look forward to working with my friend and with his colleagues and, certainly, through the appropriations process to making sure that the government is appropriately funded and well governed.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this rule. The rule demonstrates once again that the Democrat majority refuses to acknowledge, accept, or address the very real crisis at our southern border.

New numbers recently came out illustrating the magnitude of the crisis. CBP detained more than 144,000 migrants in the month of May. This was the third consecutive month when we had in excess of 100,000 migrants detained at the border: 101,000 in March, 109,000 in April, and 144,000 in May. We are on track to apprehend over 1 million migrants this fiscal year, approximately the population of Austin, Texas.

Smugglers and cartels continue to preach that now is the time to come to the United States. They call children ``permisos,'' or permits, and exploit them to get scores of adults unrelated to the children across the border.

These criminal organizations run an international smuggling operation filled with misery and abuse. Migrants who survive the smugglers often arrive in poor health, physically exhausted, and in need of urgent medical care.

The men and women of CBP are doing the best they can to respond to this humanitarian crisis, but they have run out of space to safely house and process the unprecedented numbers of family units seeking entry into the United States. In the next couple of weeks, Health and Human Services will run out of funds to feed and shelter the vulnerable unaccompanied children.

Four weeks ago, the President and Congress sent an urgent request for supplemental appropriations to address this crisis. Ranking Member Granger and I filed an amendment to the minibus which would have provided the $4.5 billion requested by the President.

It would have replenished critical funds needed to feed and shelter migrant families and unaccompanied children. It would have provided urgent medical care and transportation services, and it would pay the growing cost of overtime for the men and women of DHS working on the front lines of this crisis.

Unfortunately, for the third time in the last month, the majority refused to make our amendment in order. Democrats haven't approved a dime for this crisis.

Because of the political dysfunction in their own Caucus, they stubbornly refuse to put forward any solutions. It has gotten to the point where editorial boards in some of the Nation's most liberal cities are now calling Democrats out for their inaction.

Democrats need to stop denying the facts and blaming the President for this crisis. The time has come to face reality and work with the President and Republicans in Congress to immediately resolve this humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to defeat the previous question on this rule. If we do that, we can finally bring this critically needed supplemental funding to the House for a vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for his courtesy.

Mr. Speaker, there is a document that I hold in my hand that covers the epidemic apparently that is taking siege over America. It contains the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence paraphrases we are all created equal with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I am honored to serve in this body and, with honor, walk through the halls and look at the historical depictions of the early years.

Just coming back from D-Day in Normandy, I am reminded of the brave men and, certainly, women who served in the United States military, supporters in World War II, but, in particular, the men who stormed the Normandy beach.

I am reminded, I am sure, of the words of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said: The world is watching, and they will join you in marching to victory.

This Constitution has the Ninth Amendment, the right to privacy. It has the right to freedom of religion and freedom of access and freedom of speech. And all that is being done here today is to acknowledge not only the poor 15-year-old, 13-year-old, and 14-year-old that my good friend from Maryland talked about, but, all over the country, denying poor women access to health services that should really be based upon their faith, their God, their family, and their medical provider.

In some of the bills in Missouri and in some of the bills that are being proposed in Georgia, Alabama, and in my own State of Texas, it is litigation that would get you healthcare. It is no respect of the individual human being, the person, who may have to go back to the antics of yesteryear, dealing with the tactics of coat hangers of which many of us are aware.

Let me also say that underlying in this rule is the opportunity for the force of the authority of the Article I Congress to enforce individuals to come before congressional committees, such as the Committee on the Judiciary, which we will debate later.

It is invested in this Constitution, because of Article I authority and the collegial response that the Founding Fathers wanted us to have, that there are no unequal branches--there is a number one branch--and one branch should not ignore and disrespect the other branch.

Therefore, if Article I branch, which we are in, asks for witnesses and then is blocked by another branch that has no greater status--read the Constitution.

In this rule, we have tried to correct the imbalance and inappropriateness that is occurring in this body and in this process, and so I ask my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation to restore the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Oklahoma, and I thank my friend from Maryland who reminds us that our President was constitutionally elected and that our President was elected by the way our Constitution describes and outlines, and we thank our President for the work he is doing.

Mr. Speaker, I cosponsored an amendment with Congressman Cole to remove a dangerous poison pill in the appropriations bill that would block the free exercise of rights for the American people. Congress has long supported robust protections for rights of conscience. The right to follow your conscience on deeply held religious and moral beliefs is a foundational value of our country. In a free society like ours, adherence to one's convictions should not be just tolerated but encouraged. Our forefathers fought like hell to liberate our country from a monarchy that mandated what to believe and how to behave.

How soon we have forgotten. It happens in small increments, with small, minor changes here and there, but they grow larger and more invasive. Someday you will find yourself back under the yoke, with an oppressive government telling you what to believe and how to behave.

This conscience rule is absolutely necessary to preserve the freedom of expression that we hold dear in our country. The rider in the Labor HHS bill eliminating this rule is a poison pill and does not belong in an appropriations package.

The Trump administration has vigorously supported the right for our people to act on their religious and moral convictions. President Trump's leadership on this issue has encouraged millions of Americans who have seen these protections start to slip away in the past decade.

Who are we to force people to act against their convictions and religious beliefs?

It is a slippery slope to despotism, but I think some of our colleagues would have us go down that road in pursuit of some greater good. I can assure you that forcing the American people to work against their convictions and beliefs will lead us to nothing but destruction, and I guarantee that this bill will never be signed into law if this language remains.

This amendment must be made in order so that we can debate it and remove the poison pill from the final bill. Otherwise, the time my colleagues have spent on the Labor HHS bill is a giant waste of time because it will never make it to the President's desk.