Authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes.

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 thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, Special Counsel Mueller officially ended his investigation several weeks ago. His office is closed. Because of Attorney General Barr, his report is public.

And his findings are very clear: No collusion and no obstruction. This is the bottom line of the Mueller report.

But, Mr. Speaker, Democrats refuse to accept it. Mr. Speaker, even the chairman of the committee refuses to go read the portion that he is allowed to read, only six lines. He refuses to read it, but he wants to come here today.

They continue to believe their worst conspiracy theories about the President, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Speaker, it is even reported in newspapers that, in the campaign to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee, one said he campaigned for the position because he would be the best with impeachment.

Mr. Speaker, even on the floor of this House, there were more than 60 Members on the other side of the aisle who voted for impeachment before the Mueller report was ever presented to the public.

At its core, H. Res. 430 is just a desperate attempt to relitigate the Mueller investigation. That is why I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution.

It does not strengthen Congress' oversight powers, contrary to what you may hear from the other side, Mr. Speaker. Fundamentally, it is an impeachment effort in everything but name.

Mr. Speaker, just look at the unnecessary contempt citation against Attorney General Barr. Less than a month after Barr received the Mueller report, Mr. Speaker, Chairman Nadler issued a subpoena that would have required the Attorney General of the United States of America to break the law.

That is not my opinion. Let's be very clear whose words those are: Jonathan Turley's. Mr. Speaker, probably everybody in this body not only knows who Jonathan Turley is; he has, probably, the utmost respect. He is one of the most respected legal scholars in this country.

Now, he told the committee, Mr. Speaker:

You have to tie your request carefully to your authority to

demand information . . . if Bill Barr had actually complied

with the subpoena as written, he would have violated Federal

law.

If he would have complied, he would have violated Federal law.

Mr. Speaker, that is why we are here. Not only, Mr. Speaker, does the chairman of that committee ask the attorney general to break the law or he will try to hold him in contempt; he won't even go read the report.

On May 8, only a few weeks after the first subpoena was issued, House Judiciary Democrats voted to hold A. G. Barr, the Attorney General of the United States, in contempt.

Why would they vote to hold him in contempt? Because they were so angry that the Attorney General wouldn't break the law. They wanted him to break the law; then he won't be held in contempt.

In a May 24 letter to the Attorney General, Chairman Nadler offered, for the first time, to negotiate and narrow the scope of his subpoena request. Then, you know what? He changed his mind.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with the Judiciary Committee to turn over documents related to the Mueller report.

Now, if the public is watching, this just looks so disorganized. You wonder, from that committee, Mr. Speaker, wouldn't they know better than to ask the Attorney General to break the law?

Mr. Speaker, wouldn't you know that, when you get to this point in a career, you wouldn't be so upset that someone just doesn't do exactly what you want--and you ask them to break the law--that you would vote to hold them in contempt and force your side of the aisle just to vote that way.

That is not how it has happened in this body before. If the public wants to see a good example of congressional oversight, then let's look at something that is comparable: the House's contempt vote against Attorney General Holder in 2012.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform took two important actions before suing in Federal court. First, it negotiated with Attorney General Holder in good faith for 15 months--not a few days. It never asked him to break the law either.

After narrowing the scope of its original subpoena, and only after extensive back-and-forth negotiations failed, did it vote to hold him in contempt.

Second, it got the full House to vote on it and approve--you know what--a bipartisan contempt.

Now, I am not sure why the Committee on the Judiciary, Mr. Speaker, would not know this, but I did a little research because I was here during that time. You know why they didn't realize it was the best way to do it and it was bipartisan? Because, Mr. Speaker, a lot of them stormed outside of the Chamber.

Yep. You heard me right. Even though 17 Democrats voted in favor of the criminal contempt resolution against Holder and 21 voted to enforce civil citation, a number of them stormed outside and protested, took their ball and ran home. Mr. Speaker, I guess, to the public, it looked like they had just thrown another fit.

Now, that is pretty significant. As many of you remember, it was contentious. I remember, Mr. Speaker, watching then-Minority Leader Pelosi, Minority Whip Hoyer, and Congressman Nadler lead 100 Democrats off the House floor to protest the vote.

Mr. Speaker, you won't see that on our side. We believe in the rule of law. Mr. Speaker, we would have done the exact same thing the Attorney General did, that Jonathan Turley said, that you would have had to break the law to try to appease somebody's own personal vendetta.

The idea, Mr. Speaker, that someone would run for a position to say that they would be best to impeach somebody and even vote to impeach without even having a report and then, when you get a report and you could go down and read just those six lines that you want to complain about, but you won't--the same person, Mr. Speaker, that would run outside and say: I got elected to Congress, but I am going to pout and I am going to go outside.

Mr. Speaker, that may be the same person that would want to bring this to the floor today.

But what is so different about today than all the others? Well, we are doing something we have never done before. We are doing something that is going to take the power away of every Member in this body and give it to a select few.

Mr. Speaker, if this vote passes today, Members of this body are going to say: Don't bring it here and let me represent my own people and vote about going to court. Let's just give it, really, to three people. Let's give it to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, and to the majority whip. Because that is what BLAG is.

I know the courts are going to sit there and say that is not what Congress is supposed to do. Congress has never done that before. But, you know what? If this new majority thinks all they want to do is make an attorney general break the law, I guess they could break every rule, every history, every point of representation there is inside this body.

Did we wonder if this would happen? Do we wonder why you wouldn't take the months, as they have shown in the time before, and actually come to a bipartisan conclusion?

I think the plan was already written. I don't know if people can talk about the word ``patient'' because, Mr. Speaker, I remember Congressman Hank Johnson of the Rules Committee--this is the Speaker's committee, so everybody understands correctly, that is just appointed by the Speaker on the majority side--said, Mr. Speaker: ``Donald Trump will stand for reelection again in a very short period of time, and we don't have 400 days to wait. . . .''

So, don't care about the rule of law. Don't care about asking him to break the law. Just break every historical trend and try to take the power away from millions of Americans and from the Members of Congress who represent them here.

I didn't know today would come. Mr. Speaker, I didn't know if someone would go this far.

I didn't know, just because someone, Mr. Speaker, despises somebody else, that an election didn't turn out the way of the desire--Mr. Speaker, I have been on losing sides before, but I would never think I would break the law just because of losing an election.

I would never think of asking somebody in as high an office as the Attorney General of the United States of America to not give due process, to come to the floor and strip the power of 430 Members and put it in a select few.

Mr. Speaker, I have to be honest. I don't put anything past what this new desire is about.

Mr. Speaker, Democrats say we are in a constitutional crisis, and they are right, but not because of Attorney General Barr. The constitutional crisis is this: When Democrats can't win, they change the rules.

I just heard it on the floor, Mr. Speaker, that, yes, from the other side of the aisle, said this has never been done before, and, yes, this is nothing this House has ever desired to do. But it is also no way to govern.

The American people deserve a majority that is serious about coming up with solutions, not subpoenas. There are plenty of important challenges that we can be working on to solve.

Just yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I opened The New York Times. It is not a paper that I think I always agree with, but it had an editorial not for the first time, but for the second time, and it was talking about the crisis on the border.

As I read this editorial, I found myself agreeing with it greatly. When I read it, it talked about the border, talked about Washington needing to stop dithering and do something about it.

I looked and wondered what committee would be most responsible for this challenge? Lo and behold, it was the Judiciary. So I turned it on in hopes that I would see a hearing, maybe I would even see a markup.

No, Mr. Speaker, who did I see? I saw John Dean. John Dean, who pleaded guilty in Watergate. The same individual who has put more than 900 tweets out against the President, many before any Mueller report came forth. He was the expert witness--the same individual who is paid by CNN, the same individual who said the Presidency of George Bush was worse than Watergate.

I guess this new majority will go to no end. It doesn't matter if the facts don't go where they want; just change the rules.

I wonder, all these new freshman Democrats, Mr. Speaker, when they swore in to uphold the Constitution, does that mean trying to make the Attorney General break the law? Does that mean giving their power away to a select few?

There is a crisis on the border. The New York Times knows it. The country of Mexico knows it. I think almost everybody in America knows it except, Mr. Speaker, I guess, this majority.

The committee of responsibility is more concerned about bringing somebody in who pleaded guilty in Watergate, who makes their money off, Mr. Speaker, writing books claiming every Republican President there is is worse than Watergate and then asking the Attorney General to break the law.

That is not a legacy I would be proud of. It is not a legacy I would want to be a part of.

But, Mr. Speaker, I will say on this floor: I will vote against taking the power away, even the power away from people on the other side of the aisle. I won't lead a protest, and I won't go outside, and I won't take my ball, and I won't run home. I believe in the rule of law.

Mr. Speaker, I had the responsibility and the opportunity to go read the redacted portions of the Mueller report, just as some on the other side of the aisle could. It is just six lines. Not that I think it was just my responsibility, but as an elected official I thought it was a responsibility, so I went. But, Mr. Speaker, the people leading this today, they have not. They think they know better.

I don't know if they know better, but one thing I do know: They are changing the rules of the House simply because they cannot win. That is not the American way.

Those are the reasons why we stand up. Those are the things that America unites behind, the rule of law. This will not be a day that is proud. This will not be a day that, when they look back in history, the individuals who vote for this will talk about.

It is one when they get asked the question later in life, Mr. Speaker, is there something they regret, they will regret that emotion overtook them. They will regret their own personal dislike drove them.

I am not sure if they are proud of the day when they storm out of the building, even though there is a bipartisan vote here. But I guess that same emotion, the same, Mr. Speaker, lack of ability to actually look at the rule of law and work toward something instead of just changing the rules because you can't have your way, that is what today is about.

The worst part of it all is removing the power of individual Members and putting in a select three. But then again, Mr. Speaker, when you study history and forms of government, that is what socialism is all about.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 431, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 430) authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H. Res. 430.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is a dark time. This Congress is being tested--in this case, not by a foreign adversary but by our own President, a President who is undertaking a relentless campaign of obstruction and stonewalling.

We have never seen anything like this. Never before, Mr. Speaker, has a President from either party so flagrantly ignored Congress' constitutional oversight authority and our Nation's separation of powers.

You don't have to take my word for it. President Trump has declared, ``We are fighting all the subpoenas,'' and, ``I don't want people testifying.'' These words make Richard Nixon look like an Eagle Scout.

His Attorney General, William Barr, is apparently more than willing to follow the President's command. He has refused to release the full, unredacted Mueller report and any underlying evidence until a compromise was finally reached yesterday. That is after the Judiciary Committee had already voted to hold him in contempt of Congress. Apparently, the Attorney General went from being America's lawyer to being the defense counsel for the President of the United States.

I hope the Justice Department acts in good faith on this new agreement. These are documents that Congress needs to see in response to Special Counsel Mueller's findings. But if they do not, and if the Attorney General holds back key information, then all options need to be on the table, including enforcing these subpoenas. That is in addition to the fact that some documents and testimony we deserve to obtain could very well fall outside the bounds of this agreement.

The Mueller report is just the tip of the iceberg. The President is using every trick in the book, including false claims of executive privilege, absolute immunity, and lack of legitimate legislative purpose, all to obstruct legitimate inquiries into matters that impact Americans' daily lives. This includes the President's attack on affordable healthcare coverage for millions of Americans, including those with preexisting conditions; his family separation policy that has torn apart vulnerable immigrant families; his misappropriation of military funds for his offensive border wall; and his decision to roll back landmark civil rights protections.

This is exactly the sort of concentrated power in the hands of the few that the Founders intentionally prevented through the creation of the three separate but coequal branches of government, each branch with unique powers and responsibilities and each branch expected to act as a check on the power of the others.

But the President is trying to take this balance of power and centralize it

in one place, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He is acting as though the law applies to every American but himself.

The President's strategy here is clear. Tweet by tweet, quote by quote, he has laid it bare for all of us to see.

The question is whether this Congress will have the courage to take a stand against it and whether we will confront it for what it is, an attack on the very notion of Congress as a coequal branch of government. I can't speak for my friends on the other side of the aisle, but this Democratic majority will not allow this President to turn a blind eye to the rule of law.

That is why I introduced this measure, H. Res. 430. It is a civil enforcement resolution that will strengthen our hand in court as Congress tries to get the documents this administration is currently trying to hide, so we can uncover the truth and follow the facts, wherever they may lead.

The first part of this resolution follows past precedent used by Democratic and Republican majorities, this time to allow the Judiciary Committee to go to court to enforce subpoenas issued to the Attorney General and former White House General Counsel Don McGahn.

The second part reaffirms key language in House rules, making clear that every committee chair retains the ability to go to Federal court to seek civil enforcement of their subpoenas when authorized by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group. That includes those already issued, as well as any future subpoenas.

I know some of my colleagues on the other side will be quick to claim this resolution is unprecedented. To them, I would ask this: What is the precedent for an administration refusing to comply with any congressional oversight--no documents, no information, nothing? There isn't one.

We have never seen anything like this before, so we need an appropriate response like this because of this administration's constant obstruction.

I am proud that my fellow committee chairs quickly joined in cosponsoring this resolution, including Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Cummings, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Engel, Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Neal, Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff, and Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Waters.

I urge all of my colleagues to join us. This deserves support from both sides of the aisle.

I know the silence from some of my Republican friends to what this President is doing has been deafening, but this moment demands you finally speak up and say enough is enough. This resolution is not about politics or partisanship. It is about defending the rule of law and the very notion of separation of powers.

The challenge here is so great that if we don't stand up to President Trump today, then we risk losing the power to stand up to any President in the future.

I strongly urge my colleagues: Let's make clear that the law still matters, even in Donald Trump's America. We can do that by voting ``yes'' on this resolution and making clear that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States.

Let's do right by the American people. Let's restore the dignity of this institution. Let's pass this resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), the distinguished chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, let me just assure the gentleman from Georgia that there is nothing novel about this legislation. It is not novel because everything in this bill goes to the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, and that has been the case in the past.

What is novel, however, is a President of the United States who says ``ignore subpoenas'' and ``we will not cooperate'' and tells people not to testify. That is not only novel, it is shocking.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say to my friends on the other side: You are going to have a choice today to either vote for this resolution and stand up for this institution and support the rule of law, or you are going to vote in a way that is going to be complicit with this President's obstruction and disrespect for this institution and disrespect for the rule of law. I urge you to vote with us.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who is the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, let me correct the Record in response to the gentleman of Ohio. The Russians didn't attempt to interfere in our election; they did interfere in our election.

And, if my friends read the Mueller report, they would realize they interfered in the election to help Donald Trump get elected.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), the distinguished chair of the Committee on the Judiciary.

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

The distinguished minority leader began by saying that the Mueller report makes it clear that there was no collusion and no obstruction. Maybe that is what you would conclude if you just read Barr's summary which tried to cover up what the Mueller report said, but I would urge the distinguished minority leader to read the report. I am happy to lend him my bifocals if he has trouble reading it.

But the report doesn't say that. It doesn't say no collusion. And on the issue of obstruction of justice, it says: If we were convinced that he, the President, did not commit a crime, we would have said so.

That is what the report says. And I would remind my colleagues that obstruction of justice is a crime.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ted Lieu).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Texas an additional 1 minute.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side have responded to this legislation with the same old same old.

They are circling the wagons around this President and his team. They are deliberately turning a blind eye to the corruption, to the deception, to the illegality that has surrounded this White House.

But let me remind them all of why we are here today. We are here because the American people elected each of us to write laws and to ensure those who execute them are accountable.

We all took an oath when we were sworn in to uphold and defend the Constitution. That is our job.

None of us were sent here to play defense for the President of the United States.

There are some things that are more important than politics, and I hope that even in this day and age, there are still some things that are more sacred than partisanship, like the rule of law and the separation of powers.

I mean, each of us took the same oath. We now have a choice whether or not to uphold it.

The choice should be a simple one: to stand up to President Trump and to defend the Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I remember when many of my Republican friends ran for office claiming to be constitutional conservatives. Well, this is their chance to back up their campaign slogan with their vote.

We have a President that publicly states: ``We're fighting all the subpoenas.''

And I don't want people to testify.

Those are his words. Those are the words of the President, not some mob boss.

As we heard from the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, Chairman Cummings, the White House hasn't turned over a single document, a single piece of paper that his committee has requested to do their oversight work, not one piece of paper.

At the core of this resolution is Congress getting the appropriate documents, so we can do the appropriate oversight. That is part of the job.

How can anybody be against that? To be against that is to be part of the coverup, is to be complicit with the obstruction that this White House demonstrates each and every day.

Mr. Speaker, I remind my colleagues that history will judge how we react to this moment. So I urge all of my colleagues, do not let this moment pass us by. Vote ``yes'' on this resolution, and let's hold the President accountable.

Nobody is above the law in the United States of America, not even the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H. Res. 430, a resolution authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas, and for other purposes.

This resolution is an assault on this body's constitutional oversight authorities. By proceeding in this unprecedented manner, the House is putting the judicial branch in an unfortunate position.

Never before has the House authorized the general counsel to sue without first exhausting all our constitutional remedies to gain compliance with our oversight demands. Proceeding in this manner risks weakening our ability to carry out our oversight responsibilities.

On May 8, the Committee on the Judiciary voted 24-16 to hold Attorney General Barr in criminal contempt of Congress. The committee did not pursue contempt against Donald McGahn. Mr. McGahn's case is unique, and I will address it in more detail later.

Contrary to press reports, Mr. Speaker, we are not acting today on the contempt citation reported by the Committee on the Judiciary. We are authorizing the House to sue the Attorney General, Mr. McGahn, and any other official or private citizen any committee chair deems contemptuous in the future.

This is a novel, untested, and risky proposition. I will give it to you this way, Mr. Speaker: The majority is definitely audacious in their request.

The media and the Democrats routinely rail against the President being quick to sue. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what the majority is doing. Having rushed to contempt, we are now bypassing that remedy altogether and going straight to court.

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley recently wrote, Democrats' litigation strategy ``is clearly driven more by political than legal calculations.''

This is the problem I have, Mr. Speaker: These tactics weaken the House, aggrandize the executive branch, and cede decisionmaking to the judicial branch.

This is a problem. The majority can mess up oversight however they want to. The majority can rush to judgment whenever they want to.

My chairman has subpoenaed most everything that moves, and it seems other committees are wanting to as well. But here is the problem: When you are rushing to this and you are taking it on grounds that are not legally sound--and which, by the way, at this same hearing where Mr. Turley was, all three of the Democrat witnesses also agreed that the subpoena of the Attorney General was not legal in the sense that it was asking him to do something illegal.

The other issue here is, when you practice proper oversight, we are getting documents on election results, we are also getting documents on immigration and others from this administration. Where the rub has come is in overbroad illegal subpoenas from these committees.

Now, they may want to screw it up now for their purposes, but I don't want it in the future, going forward, where this House's oversight ability has been tampered by a rush to judgment. Let's think about this institution more than our next headline.

This is a problem because it is uncertain here, Mr. Speaker, the House will even be granted standing in court since we have declined to exercise all of our constitutional remedies, namely, contempt, in its many forms.

This is not the only impediment facing Democrats. At every turn, as we have discussed in our minority views to the committee's contempt report, the majority refused to engage with DOJ in the requisite negotiations and accommodation processes.

During our markup of the contempt resolution, the chairman made several damaging admissions--this is the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary:

First, he conceded the Attorney General cannot lawfully comply with his subpoena demanding grand jury material.

Second, he stated the subpoena was the beginning of a dialogue. I am not sure what first-year law student will believe that a subpoena is the beginning of a dialogue.

Third, he admitted the subpoena was intentionally broad to give the committee clout in court.

Again, I am not sure which Black's Law Dictionary we are looking up under ``subpoena,'' but that is not part of it.

All along, the goal has been to get to court, not to get information and conduct legitimate oversight of Russian interference or secure our elections. If Democrats were interested in these good government issues, they would have accepted DOJ's offer to review the nearly unredacted Mueller report.

Today, Mr. Speaker, the chairman, even, has not done so. The goal is to clearly haul the administration into court in an attempt to pacify a base rabid for impeachment.

When Congress exercises its oversight powers, it must take advantage of every offer of information from the other branch. It is disingenuous to decline the free information Democrats so strongly claim to want. It shows the majority does not want the information; they want a fight.

In addition to the subpoena being overly broad and requiring the Attorney General to violate the law to comply, the chairman failed to establish a valid legislative purpose for his demands. There are other avenues the chairman could seek to get the information he wants. Congress could pass a law granting itself an exemption to grand jury secrecy rules, but the majority has not brought that up.

The most alarming aspect of this action, however, is the unprecedented speed--a mere 44 days passed between the chairman's first request to the Attorney General and the date the committee held him in contempt. In stark contrast, 464 days passed from the date that Chairman Issa requested information from Attorney General Holder on Fast and Furious and the date the Committee on Oversight and Reform held him in contempt, 138 days for Harriet Miers and the date the committee held her in contempt.

The action the majority is authorizing today against Don McGahn, however, Mr. Speaker, is far more egregious for many reasons. Mr. McGahn is not the custodian of the documents the committee and the chairman demand. The White House is. Yet we are smearing a private citizen's reputation and dragging him into court--at taxpayer expense-- in an effort to redo the Mueller investigation because the majority and the media didn't like the outcome.

Democrats again have failed to lay a foundation for any action against Mr. McGahn. Chairman Nadler has never formally objected to the President's protective assertion of executive privilege or other common law privileges asserted by Mr. McGahn.

Under Supreme Court precedent, the chairman must take this important procedural step to pursue further actions against a witness. The witness should be given a clear-cut choice between compliance and noncompliance, between answering the question and risking prosecution for contempt. Here, the witness is being hauled into court without proper notice.

Evidence of this glaring error is in the Record. On May 31, Chairman Nadler wrote Mr. McGahn's counsel and stated he did not agree with the White House or Mr. McGahn and offered to

continue negotiating, but the chairman also gave Mr. McGahn a deadline of June 7--this past Friday--to respond. Meanwhile, the Rules Committee noticed a markup of this resolution on June 6, one day before the deadline.

I think we are seeing the pattern here. This is a revealing error. But errors occur when you are pushing action through at light speed and ceding your power to the judicial branch. A court will decide whether the House has standing, whether the case is right, and whether the Congress is entitled to the information outside of an impeachment inquiry.

As also has been said, the propositions are a gamble. Here, Mr. Speaker, we are gambling with the power of a coequal branch. This approach is untested and can do significant harm to Congress' Article I authority.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, I must make mention, the authorization of the general counsel to seek pro bono legal services circumvents the House ethics rules.

Mr. Speaker, those rules provide an exception for Members to bring civil action challenging the lawfulness of an action of a Federal agency or an action of a Federal official taken in an official capacity provided that the action concerns a matter of public interest rather than a matter that is personal in nature.

This resolution contravenes ethics rules by giving the general counsel the authority, in Mr. McGahn's case, to solicit a gift: pro bono level services. I am not sure that was the majority's intent, but the inconsistencies result when Democrats aim to rush resolutions through the House outside of regular order.

Mr. Speaker, the majority may wish to change the rules. This majority may wish to get to the finish line quicker. The majority may wish to circumvent everything that is present in this House--and we have seen a lot of it over the past 5\1/2\ months--but I wish they would take into account that they may not be the majority forever, hopefully, and if they mess up oversight of a coequal branch, it is on their hands.

That is what the vote for ``yes'' is on this resolution. That is why a Member of this body should vote ``no'' for the integrity of this House.