H.Res. 166

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

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate our Republican colleagues on finally releasing their big plan to end inflation. What a day.

We have all been home for 2 weeks. We know inflation is a big problem. We hear about it at the supermarket. We see it in our communities. It is a global problem impacting every single country.

Now over the last 2 years, Democrats here in the House, alongside President Biden, have taken aggressive action to fight inflation and lower prices, and at every step Republicans have voted ``no,'' ``no,'' ``no.''

At every step, they have boasted about their own alternative comprehensive plan to stop inflation in its tracks. It has got to be big. It has got to be really big; can't wait to read it. Wow, wait until you hear about the Republican plan to stop inflation in its tracks.

Forgive me if I am confused today, because after months of waiting with bated breath, after all your announcements and after all your press releases and all your tweets about inflation, we finally find out what your big plan to stop inflation really is, your big bill to address the American people's number one concern.

It is a report. More government paperwork. Great.

I mean, will people be able to print out the report and trade it in for cheaper gas or lower food prices? Because unless they can, and I am not an economist here, but I don't think this is going to make a difference.

The bill, and I hesitate to call it a bill, because it might as well be a tweet or a press release, does nothing. Maybe it should be an amendment to an actual bill that fights inflation--just a suggestion. Don't try to pass this off as a real plan. Don't pretend this actually does anything.

I am embarrassed. I am embarrassed for my Republican colleagues, to be honest.

Mr. Speaker, it took 2 years to put this together?

The number one issue for the American people and this is what they come up with?

A book report on inflation.

It reminds me of the time last year when they tried to solve crime with a report. This is what happens when you

try to write a bill for Twitter instead of a bill that actually helps everyday people.

The audacity, the sheer audacity of saying all this inflation was caused by President Biden when the guy before him added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt, when the guy before him presided over a 39 percent increase in the national debt, when the guy before him accumulated 25 percent of the total debt in American history. The hypocrisy is incredible.

Now, just contrast that with what Democrats did to rein in inflation and lower costs for people.

Democrats capped insulin at $35 per month.

Democrats reduced the price of prescription drugs for seniors.

Democrats, for the first time in history, are making sure that Big Pharma faces penalties for raising their prices faster than inflation.

Democrats are saving families money with special tax credits for making good investments--all things that Republicans voted against.

Mr. Speaker, 100 percent of Republicans voted against reducing drug prices; 100 percent of them voted against cheaper insulin for our senior citizens; 100 percent of them voted against lower gas prices.

I guess we could give them some credit because only 95 percent of them voted against lower food prices.

Hear me out here. Maybe Republicans don't want to solve inflation. Maybe they know that addressing inflation takes on greedy CEOs, Big Oil, and billionaire corporations. Maybe they know it means standing up to Putin, who is driving up energy prices with his war in Ukraine.

Maybe Republicans are too scared to fight inflation, but Democrats are ready to go to bat against corporate greed, because we stand with everyday families who are being hurt by rising costs.

Today, Leader Jeffries is introducing the PRO Act, a bill empowering workers to unionize and hold their employers accountable for improper work practices. Because while Republicans continue standing with the billionaire corporations responsible for price gouging, Democrats stand with workers hurt by inflation. We support their right to organize for better wages.

Instead of wasting time writing a bill that only requires a book report on inflation, we spent the last 2 years taking action to actually stop inflation in the long term by bringing jobs and manufacturing back to America.

Democrats secured over $300 billion in investments in U.S. manufacturing to move supply chains back to America.

We voted to lower food and fuel prices, made the most robust updates in 70 years to the Buy American Act to boost domestic manufacturing, and after the Ocean Shipping Reform Act to cut costs for American families and bring down shipping prices, oversaw the largest 1-year decrease in the Federal deficit in American history. That is the Democratic record.

Now, we don't claim its perfect. Prices are still too high. Inflation is hurting people. I know it. Joe Biden knows it. Democratic leadership knows it. So there is a difference here. There is a difference here, and it is a big one.

Democrats are fighting for the families being hurt by inflation and taking on the greedy corporations who are driving prices up. And Republicans, their solution is to blame Democrats, blame Biden, and write a book report.

Now, I guess when you have no plans, when you have no real ideas, you will do anything to say you did something. That is all this is: a talking point, a press release, and a total waste of time. Apparently, the bar is on the ground for this new House majority, and it is a real shame.

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

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution that affirms the House's unwavering commitment to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare and states that it is the position of the House to reject any cuts to the programs.

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

Mr. Speaker, Social Security and Medicare are the bedrock of our Nation's social safety net. Yet, as many of my Republican colleagues demand reckless cuts in exchange for paying our Nation's bills, these programs are under threat.

Despite recent rhetoric to the contrary, Republicans claim that they won't cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Well, Mr. Speaker, today, Democrats are giving Republicans a chance to back up that claim with action by providing them a chance to reassure the American people not just with their words, but with their votes.

Today, they can vote unequivocally that they won't cut these vital programs. Anything short of that is an empty promise.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that none of my fellow Republican colleagues want to come down and join in with my colleague from Texas to talk about how great this bill is to fight inflation. I would be embarrassed to be here defending this measure, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from The Washington Post titled, ``What should the White House do to combat inflation? Experts weighed in with 12 ideas.

[From the Washington Post, Jan. 26, 2022]

What Should the White House Do To Combat Inflation? Experts Weighed in

With 12 Ideas

(By Jeff Stein and Rachel Siegel)

The United States is experiencing its most dramatic burst

of inflation in four decades, as rising prices hit nearly

every sector of the economy and create new political hurdles

for the Biden administration.

As the country frets over inflation and the administration

weighs how to react, The Washington Post asked independent

experts from across the ideological spectrum how they would

respond if they controlled the White House.

Their 12 ideas include using antitrust to break up large

corporations, relaxing the trade war with China, and

massively scaling up U.S. manufacturing production, among

other proposals. Some of the experts blamed President Biden

for increasing economic demand, while others insisted that

concerns about inflation have been overblown. The proposals

are not meant as exhaustive, and many of these economists

support each other's ideas.

1: make america produce again

We can once again make the United States the world's workshop

for democracy

(By Robert C. Hockett)

It should have been obvious even in February 2020 that the

coronavirus was going to present the American economy with

both demand-side and supply-side challenges. It should

therefore also have been obvious that measures to boost

demand with government programs--such as stimulus checks and

unemployment benefits--would fuel inflationary pressures if

not accompanied by measures to boost supply and the

availability of goods and products.

Almost two years after our pandemic began, policymakers are

now finally talking about supply chains, as they should have

done early in 2020. But thus far they are talking almost

solely about improving the domestic transport links in those

chains--not the production of what is being consumed.

Attention to truck routes, warehouses and loading docks is

helpful, but it isn't nearly enough in our present

environment--not in a world where we needlessly import so

much of what we used to produce.

This presents all of us with a grand opportunity now--to

reverse inflation in a manner that restores American

production and world leadership in the industries of today

and tomorrow. We can, in other words, make our war on

inflation a war on national decline.

For instance, America invented the semiconductor industry

and then globally dominated it for decades until the turn of

the millennium. Yet since we relinquished our lead over

microchips to insecure sources such as China and Taiwan, the

importance of this ubiquitous input to all modern products

has only grown. That is why so many supply shortage stories

we read about now--from autos to homes to appliances--boil

down to chip shortage stories.

Next, consider electric vehicles and their lithium-ion

batteries, as well as other related forms of high-capacity

power storage, such as the big battery packs used by power

generation stations nationwide. Here, too, production lines

are bottlenecked, slowing

product availability, lengthening product waitlists and

raising product prices.

Similar stories to these can be told about solar power

cells; hydrogen fuel cells; steel, concrete and other housing

materials; essential medical equipment; affordable cutting-

edge pharmaceuticals; rare-earth metals; and a host of other

essential inputs to modern life. If we want to end inflation

and reclaim the mantle of ``workshop of the free world'' in

one stroke, there can be no better way forward than to invest

massively in restoring U.S. productive prowess.

It can be done. When Nazi Germany rolled over France in but

six weeks in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded

that our aircraft industry, which had produced just over

3,000 planes the previous year, produce at least 50,000

planes that year. Roosevelt then directly set about building

the factories, in consultation with public officials and

private-sector industries, to produce U.S. planes, ships,

tanks, trucks, munitions, synthetic rubber and other

materiel. The government then cheaply leased these facilities

to manufacturers with plausible production plans, selling

them once the war had been won.

Roosevelt also built entire neighborhoods for workers

wishing to move near the new factories, schools for their

children, clinics for their health and power lines for their

domestic needs, making the United States the world's

``arsenal of democracy.''

This massive expansion provided the productive foundation

for America's global economic leadership from the end of the

war to the late 1970s. We lost that edge only when we began

massively ``outsourcing'' in the 1980s and 1990s.

We have all the tools Roosevelt had. The president and

White House Cabinet, in consultation with experts from

industry, should plan a national reindustrialization across

industries in every region of the country, and the Federal

Financing Bank within Treasury can fund projects devised by

all relevant federal agencies.

We can once again make the United States the world's

workshop for democracy. That will reverse not only inflation,

but also four decades of decline.

--Robert C. Hockett is a law professor at Cornell Law

School.

2: stop the spending

This surge in spending is a key driver of other prices

(By Brian Riedl)

A year ago, the Federal Reserve forecast that inflation

would increase by 1.8 percent in 2021. Instead, consumer

prices jumped 7 percent--the highest rate since 1982. Some of

this unanticipated inflation was driven by knotty issues such

as supply chain disruptions, rising energy prices, and shifts

in demand to sectors with less capacity to maintain low

prices.

Yet Washington poured gasoline on this fire by enacting the

$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March. This surge in

spending is a key driver of higher prices faced by consumers.

To combat it, lawmakers should begin paring back portions of

the remaining $500 billion in scheduled spending from the

rescue plan, put Biden's Build Back Better legislation on the

back burner and resist new spending sprees.

The critics of Biden's rescue plan were ignored, mocked--

and ultimately vindicated. A year ago, the Congressional

Budget Office estimated that the baseline economy would

operate $420 billion below capacity in 2021, and then

gradually close that output gap by 2025. Biden and

congressional Democrats--believing that the Great Recession

had been unnecessarily lengthened by insufficient stimulus--

overlearned their lesson and decided to shoot a $1.9 trillion

bazooka at a $420 billion output gap.

The problem is that once America's output capacity taps

out, any additional stimulus will simply bring inflation

rather than additional production--especially when financed

in part by Federal Reserve bond purchases. Economists on the

left and right warned lawmakers that ARP would accelerate

inflation, with top Clinton and Obama White House economist

Lawrence Summers leading the charge.

With the word ``trillion'' becoming commonplace, it is easy

to downplay the sheer size of the American Rescue Plan. It is

the most expensive spending law of the past 50 years,

including the Cares Act approved under President Donald

Trump.

In its first seven months, ARP spent $1.2 trillion--which

exceeds the entire cost of the 2017 tax cuts from their

enactment through the same late 2021 date. All this spending

is on top of the December 2020 stimulus bill that poured in

$900 billion.

The inflation damage created by Biden's stimulus would be

more justifiable if it was necessary to end the pandemic.

However, just 1 percent of its cost went toward vaccines and

5 percent had any direct relation to health care. Instead,

the law gave state and local governments $350 billion for

budget deficits that did not exist. Schools received $129

billion even as they sat on $50 billion in unused relief

funds from earlier emergency bills. The unemployment bonuses

were so large and self-defeating that 26 states took the rare

step of refusing federal assistance and canceling the bonuses

before they expired. Even the popular relief checks--which,

combined with earlier checks, amounted to $11,400 for a

typical family of four--contributed to the very inflation

that ultimately eroded their value.

Moving forward, combating inflation requires addressing

supply chains, reducing tariffs and gradually tightening

Federal Reserve policy. Yet it makes no sense to push one

foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. Lawmakers should

explore options to pare back the $500 billion in scheduled

ARP spending, such as rescinding extraneous assistance to K-

12 education, businesses and private pension bailouts. They

should also reject BBB legislation that would spend trillions

more upfront, yet delays many of its disinflationary taxes

until later years. BBB's subsidies and regulations would also

drive drastic price increases in child care, and thus should

be rejected.

--Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan

Institute.

3: Control the covid pandemic

`Covid's fingerprints on inflation are unmistakable`

(By Claudia Sahm)

Consumer prices rose 7 percent in 2021--the fastest pace in

40 years--and covid deaths doubled to more than 800,000.

These two facts are bound together. The solution to today's

high inflation, as with labor shortages and supply chain

disruptions, is clear: Contain the pandemic.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell agrees. Asked at his

reconfirmation hearing by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-

Nev.) if he believes containing the pandemic is the best way

to fight inflation, Powell said: ``I do. And imagine a world

in which we no longer have to deal with the pandemic. . . . .

We would quickly see the supply-side problems alleviate. We'd

probably see significantly more labor supply. So these issues

are still related to the pandemic.''

The data supports Powell and experts like me who focus on

covid. As one example, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank

of San Francisco estimate that the price increases in the

spending categories most sensitive to covid disruptions

accounted for about half of the total inflation (excluding

food and energy) before the pandemic. Now they account for

three-quarters of it. Of course, what's pandemic-related and

what's not is impossible to know for certain. But covid's

fingerprints on inflation are unmistakable.

We do not have a monetary policy crisis. We have a covid

crisis. In fact, up to this point, fiscal and monetary policy

have been a relatively bright spot in the pandemic and

notably better than after the Great Recession. Yes, inflation

is high. Consumer spending, even with the higher prices, is

strong. The unemployment rate dropped below 4 percent in

December, less than two years after the recession began.

Overall, the economy is moving rapidly in the right

direction. But the pandemic is moving rapidly in the wrong

direction with the omicron variant.

To fight inflation, the Biden White House must end the

pandemic. The goals the administration set in January 2021,

including ``expanding masking, testing, treatment, data,

workforce and clear public health standards'' and

``protect[ing] those most at risk,'' are the right ones.

Julia Raifman, a public health professor at Boston

University, argues: ``That's what we need to do now that will

help us navigate our way out of this pandemic. If we don't

have that, we will continue to have the virus manage us.''

High inflation and labor shortages will continue too.

The White House must use all its influence to push business

leaders, community organizers, members of Congress, governors

and mayors across the political spectrum to join in these

public health efforts. Instead, administration officials used

their bully pulpit to bust a strike by the Chicago teachers

union over a lack of coronavirus protections, saying that

they ``do not believe people should be sitting at home'' and

should go to unsafe workplaces. That won't solve our economic

problems, but it will kill people.

The Fed is not ``behind the curve'' in fighting inflation.

It's the White House that's behind on ``bending the curve''

of covid cases, and it's falling further behind every day.

--Claudia Sahm is the director of macroeconomic research at

the Jain Family Institute.

4: Invest in child care

Child-care policies `can boost the capacity, productivity and

the potential of our economy'

(By Lauren Melodia)

Although the unemployment rate is falling faster than

expected, the pandemic continues to fundamentally disrupt our

economy. Many people are choosing to remain out of the labor

market altogether until public health conditions and

disruptions subside, which in turn limits productive capacity

and can raise prices. One policy that could address many of

these issues across sectors at once has already passed the

House and is waiting for Senate action: public investment in

our child-care system.

Child care is the backbone of our economy and can enable

all parents--who historically have some of the highest labor

force participation rates across all genders, races and

education levels--to get and keep a job. But as of 2018, many

communities across the country are child-care deserts--a

result of our nation's complex history of underfunding,

undervaluing and under-compensating care work and women's

labor more broadly.

The covid pandemic has further decimated this

infrastructure. As of this time last year, 20,000 child-care

providers were estimated to have permanently shut down. And

yet ample evidence exists that access to even part-time day

care and preschool programming has a

dramatic impact on parents' labor force participation.

Private markets and existing policies will not solve these

problems on their own, for many reasons.

First, America's historical and continued reliance on

unpaid care workers drives women's wages down throughout the

economy. This is one of the major dynamics of the gender pay

gap and makes the choice of paying for child care

unaffordable for many families. Because care work

traditionally done by women is unpaid, women are undervalued

in the labor market--where they make 83 cents on the dollar

to men. That disincentivizes them from entering the labor

market. What results is a cycle in which women are unable to

secure jobs that allow them to pay for the cost of child

care, which in turn keeps the pay for child-care providers

low.

Second, because of this dynamic, the child-care industry is

built around low wages and thin, unsustainable profits that

have contributed to the failure of the market to deliver a

greater supply of child-care centers to meet demand.

Lastly, the government's existing consumer subsidies

program, while making child care more affordable for many,

has not resulted in the growth of the supply of child care. A

2021 Government Accountability Office report found that 78

percent of families eligible for child-care subsidies do not

use them, often because there are no available spaces at

local child-care facilities or because they live in a child-

care desert.

By making supply-side child-care investments--building new

child-care centers; offering loans and grants to existing or

recently closed small-business child-care providers; and

offering universal pre-K--we could both enable parents to

reenter the workforce and create new jobs in child care.

Those new jobs would disproportionately go to Black and Brown

women, who have been hit hardest by the pandemic and are

still suffering from some of the lowest employment rates.

Black women, who historically have some of the highest labor

force participation rates in the country, currently

experience the largest gap (3.5 percent) in their employment

rate, comparing December 2021 with pre-pandemic levels.

Many of these policies were passed by the House in the

Build Back Better Act and are now on the table in the Senate.

And once they are passed and implemented, we can boost the

capacity, productivity and the potential of our economy and

reduce future economic disruptions--all of which can be

deflationary and stabilizing.

Insofar as today's inflation--or the fear of future

inflation--is linked to labor market tightness or dynamics,

investment in child care is critical for minimizing ongoing

disruptions and expanding people's ability to work across all

industries in our economy.

--Lauren Melodia is the deputy director of macroeconomic

analysis at the Roosevelt Institute.

5: Tax wealthy investors

The richest 10 percent consume as much as the bottom 40

percent combined

(By William Spriggs)

The economy proved far less resilient to the shock of the

global coronavirus crisis than most people had expected. We

need to focus on measures that increase the supply of goods

and target price inflation--particularly in markets where

inequality is helping drive prices--rather than taking

measures that would destroy jobs and weaken growth. One way

to do so would be to raise capital gains taxes on investors

and levy new taxes on income from stock dividends.

Consumption in America is currently extraordinarily ``top-

heavy,'' meaning the wealthy consume far more than most

people. In fact, the richest 10 percent consume as much as

the bottom 40 percent combined, according to the Bureau of

Labor Statistics. Instead of taking measures that would hurt

growth and cost jobs, policymakers could temper demand amid

massive supply chain disruptions by slowing down the

consumption of those at the very top with modest taxes on the

rich.

A tax on short-term capital gains and dividends would

disproportionately target wealthy Americans who are currently

responsible for very high demand. This would alleviate the

pressures on the supply chain without leading to a broader

economic slowdown. Encouraging longer-term savings--and

having companies retain earnings--will keep balance sheets

strong and result in investments that can help the economy

become more resilient.

It's worth stressing the potential danger of alternative

approaches. Using the blunt instrument of raising interest

rates, the tool of the Federal Reserve, would be an attempt

at price controls. But that mechanism for lowering prices

would broadly shrink demand across the income distribution.

Lower demand would lower prices, at the cost of even lower

production. In the case of automobiles, for instance, that

would be disastrous, because the unprecedented spike in used-

car prices is caused by the collapse in the current auto

supply; domestic production in November was at 58 percent of

its February 2020 level. We do not want to solve inflation by

starving the economy and causing production to plummet.

Policymakers should remember that inflationary trends are

caused in part by numerous factors outside higher demand, and

we need to be careful if we are attempting to tame it. We

have seen a rapid recovery in demand for consumer goods, but

weak demand for services. This switch in consumption has

helped protect employment by facilitating the movement of

workers forced out of the service sector, but it comes with

higher prices for some goods. In addition to exacting a

devastating human toll, the lack of protections for workers

has led to millions getting sick, creating disruptions that

lead to supply shocks that drive up prices. And it's not

clear exactly how broad-based inflation is. For instance,

rental costs have been relatively stable--well within the

Federal Reserve's target level for inflation--in another sign

that price pressures have more to do with supply shocks and

demand shifts than an overheating economy.

Mr. Speaker, maybe my friends on the other side of the aisle should take a look at this article. While I don't agree with all the ideas in here, at least this article has actual ideas to bring down inflation, instead of the Republican plan to write a book report on inflation to Congress.

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that the American people deserve better. They deserve more than a book report. They deserve action that will make a positive difference in their lives.

I encourage my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and vote ``no'' on the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from The Hill titled, ``Five actions Biden has taken in response to high gas prices.''

[From The Hill, Apr. 22, 2022]

Five Actions Biden has Taken in Response to High Gas Prices

(By Zack Budryk)

Gas prices are both a top concern for American consumers

and a consistent drag on President Biden's approval rating,

prompting the administration to take several measures to

counter pain at the pump.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll in March indicated widespread

approval for the president's decision to ban oil imports from

Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, which Biden has warned

could exacerbate energy costs. However, the same poll

indicated 70 percent of respondents disapprove of Biden's

handling of gas prices.

A number of factors impact gas prices, and experts note

many of them are outside the White House's control. Still,

the administration has taken several steps in hopes of

providing some temporary or near-term relief.

Here are five actions the Biden administration has taken so

far on gas prices:

1. Releasing oil from the strategist reserve

Biden initially announced a release of 50 million barrels

of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in November in

response to rising gas prices.

However, after a further spike around the time of Russia's

invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, Biden announced

another one-time release of 30 million barrels followed by an

average daily release of 1 million barrels over the next six

months--or about 180 million barrels overall.

Biden told reporters in late March that the price of gas

``could come down fairly significantly'' as a result of the

move.

In the days after, gas prices fell about eight cents,

according to AAA, although they have since crept up. However,

during the same period, some regions of China imposed

lockdowns in response to new COVID-19 outbreaks, which

reduced overall demand.

``This is a wartime bridge to increase oil supply until

production ramps up later this year. And it is by far the

largest release from our national reserve in our history,''

Biden said as he announced the release. ``It will provide a

historic amount of supply for a historic amount of time--a

six-month bridge to the fall.''

2. Removing restrictions on sale of higher-ethanol fuel

In an executive order last week, Biden removed restrictions

on the sale of E15, or fuel that is 15 percent ethanol,

between June and September of this year.

Ethanol-heavy fuel is sold at a limited number of stations

concentrated in corn-producing states, and sales are normally

restricted during the summer months due to concerns that

another mix, E10, could contribute to increased air

pollution. Ethanol and renewable fuel industries, however,

maintain that tailpipe emissions, rather than fuel

volatility, is a bigger contributor to smog, and that E15 is

less of a contributor than E10.

Biden administration officials projected at the time that

the availability of E15 could save a family about 10 cents

per gallon on average.

``This will also help us bridge towards real energy

independence and implementing the emergency fuel waiver the

[Environmental Protection Agency] EPA will work with states

across the country to ensure there are no significant air

quality impacts in the summer driving season,'' an official

said on a call with reporters. ``EPA is also considering

additional action to facilitate the use of E15 year-round,

including continued discussions with states who have

expressed interest in allowing year-round use of E15.''

3. Asking oil-producing nations to increase production

The U.S. has appealed to members of OPEC to step up

production and exports to cover demand, including Saudi

Arabia in particular.

However, this plan has encountered difficulties due to the

rocky Washington-Riyadh relationship.

The Biden administration has faced tensions with the Saudis

due to America's vocal criticism of the Gulf kingdom's human

rights record, particularly the Yemen civil war and the 2018

killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Meanwhile, human rights advocates have called it

inconsistent to seek closer ties with Saudi Arabia while

seeking to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

``I hate that the Biden administration has to figure out

how to leverage our relationship with Saudi Arabia to get

them to do that so that my constituents aren't being squeezed

at the pump,'' Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) told reporters in

March.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who numerous

intelligence agencies have concluded ordered Khashoggi's

killing, reportedly refused a call from Biden soon after the

Russian invasion. White House press secretary Jen Psaki has

denied the report.

4. Pressuring U.S. oil companies

Republicans have vocally blamed the Biden administration's

energy policies, in particular an executive order freezing

new oil and gas leasing on public lands, for gas prices and

insufficient supply.

That pause has been in limbo since a court order halting it

last summer, and the Biden administration last Friday

officially announced a forthcoming lease sale.

In the meantime, however, the administration has sought to

shift the blame to oil companies and accused them of gouging

customers, pointing to the industry's numerous currently

unused leases, which include some 9,000 approved drilling

permits.

Biden has called for Congress to enact a ``use it or lose

it'' policy that would impose fees on companies that do not

make use of their leased land.

``I have no problem with corporations turning a good

profit. But companies have an obligation that goes beyond

just their shareholders to their customers, their communities

and their country,'' Biden told reporters in late March. ``No

American company should take advantage of a pandemic or

[Russian President] Vladimir Putin's actions to enrich

themselves at the expense of American families.''

5. Promoting the transition to renewable energy

Amid concrete steps to bring down consumer prices, the

Biden administration has emphasized the necessity for

increased support and infrastructure for renewable fuels,

saying the current market illustrates the need for less

volatile resources.

In a fact sheet distributed to reporters, the

administration presented its steps to increase access to

clean energy as a key tenet of its response to gas prices.

Specifically, officials pointed to sales of offshore wind

leases, with a goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind

installed by the end of the decade. Officials further cited

the Interior Department's road map this week that sets a

target of doubling clean energy permits, with a goal of 25

gigawatts installed by 2025.

Mr. Speaker, President Biden has taken steps to lower prices at the pump for the American people. Since prices began to rise, President Biden released 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, removed restrictions on the sale of higher ethanol fuel, and called out oil companies for taking advantage of their customers, communities, and their country. He also continues to promote a transition to renewable energy.

So President Biden has acted to try to lower prices. My Republican colleagues cannot do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I will say finally that we have some serious challenges in this country. Inflation is one of them. The idea that after all the buildup, after all the talk of, We have a comprehensive plan to fight inflation. This is it? This is it?

This is an embarrassment, Mr. Speaker. There are things that we can do together to lower costs for the American people. A book report doesn't lower the cost for anybody.

By the way, under this bill, the book report that is required for executive orders, it is not even required to be published. They could write a book report, and no one gets to see it.

I mean, this is not what the American people had hoped for. They had hoped we would come together and kind of rally around ideas that would actually make a difference in their lives.

So, yeah. You can pass this and say, we just passed this big plan to fight inflation and then hope that nobody realizes that you did nothing.

I will say, Mr. Speaker, this is a missed opportunity. This was a time, quite frankly, where committees of jurisdiction should have come together, done hearings, heard ideas, Republican ideas and Democratic ideas, and taken the best of them and brought them to the floor; ideas that would have made a difference in people's lives. This does nothing. This does nothing.

So I guess you can tweet out that you voted for a book report on inflation and hope that your constituents will think that somehow you accomplished something big, but I would say that my constituents certainly would not be satisfied with this.

Mr. Speaker, all this talk about bringing down the deficit--and do I need to remind everybody that the first Republican bill passed this year when we came into the majority, their first bill added $114 billion to the national debt. I mean, come on.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from The Hill titled, ``CBO: GOP's IRS bill will add $114 billion to deficit.''

[From The Hill, Jan. 9, 2023]

CBO: GOP's IRS Bill Will Add $114B to Deficit

(By Mike Lillis and Aris Folley)

The Republican proposal to eliminate billions of dollars in

IRS funding will pile more than $100 billion onto federal

deficits, according to a new estimate from Congress's

official budget scorekeeper.

The bill, which is slated to hit the House floor Monday

night as the first legislative act of the new GOP majority,

would claw back most of the almost $80 billion in new IRS

funding provided under the Democrats' massive climate, health

and tax package, which was signed by President Biden last

year.

Almost $46 billion of that spending would go toward agency

enforcement efforts designed to prevent certain taxpayers--

largely corporations and wealthy individuals--from paying

less than they owe.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated Monday that

the legislation would cut federal spending by $71 billion,

but would reduce tax revenue to the tune of almost $186

billion. The net effect would be a $114 billion increase in

deficits over the next decade.

The numbers were not overlooked by Democrats, who wasted no

time hammering Republicans for vowing to rein in deficit

spending, then defying that promise in their first act of

business.

``It's a giant tax cut for rich tax cheats,'' White House

chief of staff Ron Klain tweeted on Monday. ``Bill #1 from

the new House GOP. Adds to the deficit.''

Republicans had made the IRS funding cut a top promise on

the midterm campaign trail, warning that the money would lead

to the hiring of 87,000 new tax collectors to target middle-

income Americans. Some Republicans said those agents would be

armed.

Those claims were highly misleading, however, as much of

the funding will go to hire thousands of customer service

agents and other employees with no auditing responsibilities.

And the 87,000 figure is a reference to the total number of

employees--not just auditors--the IRS hopes to hire over the

next decade, when 52,000 workers are expected to retire.

Additionally, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said

that, while the new funding is crucial to streamline

processing and eliminate the backlog of returns, the agency

will not increase audit rates for those taxpayers making less

than $400,000.

Still, few government agencies are less popular than the

IRS, and the Republican message appeared to resonate with the

GOP base.

``On our very first bill, we're going to repeal 87,000 IRS

agents,'' Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was newly

elected as Speaker, said last year as he unveiled the

Republicans' agenda. ``Our job is to work for you, not go

after you.''

Zach Moller, who previously worked as a Senate Democratic

budget aide, says the GOP's bill would violate previous House

rules targeting legislation that would add to the deficit,

known as PAYGO, that were in effect when Democrats held

control.

Under the prior rules, Moller explained, it wouldn't be in

order for lawmakers to ``have a bill on the floor that

increases the deficit over the first five or seven or first

10 years.'' The PAYGO rules were often waived, but aimed at

fiscal responsibility, Moller said.

The Republican majority is expected on Monday to pass a new

set of rules governing the new Congress, to include a so-

called ``CUTGO'' rule that exempts tax cuts from the deficit

spending prohibitions.

So anyway, look, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question, and again, I want to repeat that.

The reason why you want to vote ``no'' is because the previous question basically would allow us to bring up an amendment that basically says it is not the intention of this House to do anything to cut Social Security or Medicare.

My friends, they are all upset, notwithstanding their rhetoric, that they want to go after Social Security and Medicare.

Yeah, they were all upset that they were being called out on their words. Well, here is an opportunity to put

that to rest; very, very simple. We are not going to cut Social Security. We are not going to cut Medicare.

So if you vote ``no'' on the previous question, we can do that. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule, ``no'' on the underlying bill.

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

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

Madam Chair, I thank the distinguished ranking member of the subcommittee for her leadership on refuting this legislation.

After 2 years of rooting for economic failure and blaming President Biden for everything; for post-COVID global inflation, for the instability caused by supply chain breakdowns, and the phenomenal failure of Donald Trump's mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, after all that, after all the whining and crying about inflation, Republicans finally have the chance to take center stage, right now, with their proposed solution to the problem of inflation.

The world has been waiting with bated breath. Would it be what Richard Nixon did, wage and price controls? Would it be what Herbert Hoover, that Republican did, total laissez-faire, whatever happens, happens?

Well, the long wait is over. The GOP has now debuted their big plan for dealing with inflation in America with H.R. 347, something called the REIN IN Act, which stands for the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act.

It is a bill for a mandatory reporting requirement related to executive orders that might apply to two or three executive orders a year.

You got that right: A reporting requirement related to a handful of executive orders every year is the GOP's response to inflation after barnstorming the entire country, claiming that they had some kind of solution.

Now, you might think it is the most brilliant thing since the invention of Social Security, which they opposed, or Medicare, which they opposed, or you might think it is the dumbest thing since Donald Trump's last trillion-dollar corporate tax giveaway.

But either away, it will have zero effect on inflation or deflation in the United States of America. Nothing. It is not going to have any effect at all.

Now, our friends in the GOP are interested in this session of Congress in tortured, inscrutable, incomprehensible acronyms.

So they can have the REIN IN Act, which they seem very connected to, but I want to suggest a better title that will still conform to their acronym. Let's call it the running on empty initiative based on no ideas none act. How about that?

The legislation was hatched without any hearing, and it shows. It has no legislative meaning and no potential economic consequences.

Even as reporting bills go, it is pathetically weak, as it doesn't even require publication of the report. They came up with a reporting requirement that didn't even require the report to be published.

Look, executive orders are not the cause of inflation, and there is no economic research suggesting they are.

The most conservative economists in the world will tell you that inflation is a complex, global phenomenon connected to prices, supply chains, supply and demand curves, and unemployment rate.

Since 2020, inflation has risen worldwide, exacerbated by supply chain delays caused by the pandemic and then Vladimir Putin's filthy war of aggression in Ukraine, which some of our friends over there support.

President Biden has created something like an economic miracle out of the chaos handed to him by Donald Trump.

After signing his massive tax giveaway, Trump's failed State dysfunctional response to COVID plunged America into its most severe economic contraction since 1946. Someone dispute that.

The unemployment rate rose to 14.8 percent under Donald Trump, the highest on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting data in 1948.

In 2021, Biden and the Democrats got to work. We passed the American Rescue Plan, which fueled a strong, equitable, economic recovery with historic reductions in unemployment, in poverty, in economic hardship.

Real GDP increased by 5.7 percent. The unemployment rate decreased to 4 percent, surpassing all forecasts. Wages increased by 5 percent with the highest increases going to lower economic income earners.

So Democratic policies have allowed the U.S. to absorb the shock of rising inflation engulfing the globe since 2020.

That is serious economic policy, what President Biden and the Democrats are engaged in, and they have a silly little symbolic messaging bill for a couple of notations they didn't even want to publish originally within the process of offering executive orders.

Madam Chair, we have created 12 million new jobs in America. How many million jobs do they want to erase over there in their desperate, sudden pursuit of inflation?

They raised the debt limit three times under Donald Trump. Now they talk about the debt limit all the time. They raised it three times, and they contributed under Donald Trump 25 percent of all the debt in the United States from George Washington to Joe Biden--25 percent of the debt under one President, Donald Trump.

They did that, and now they dare come talk to us about inflation, and the bill that they advance is one to have some people pass some more paperwork around.

Come on. Give me a break. Give us something better than the running on empty initiative with no new ideas at all.

We recommend a ``no'' vote. What real economic action requires is precisely what President Biden is already doing.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, actually, I have a question because it strikes me

as a very sincerely and decently motivated amendment to a flawed bill.

But is there a reason to think that any of the current economic analyses of inflation and the current indicators that we use don't take into account the various factors that the gentleman specifies?

I yield to the gentleman for the purposes of a colloquy.

Madam Chair, reclaiming my time.

That makes great sense to me, and I am tempted to support the amendment. If the gentleman is correct, that points to a larger problem.

Is the gentleman telling us that the inflation rate today that is published by our government does not incorporate spending patterns in rural areas, for example?

Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois for the purpose of a colloquy.

I am sorry. By which definition?

Reclaiming my time, I don't know what the reason for that is, and thank you for educating me. I wasn't aware of it.

I assume they are saying the inflation rate is higher in urban areas than it is in rural areas, which is, presumably, why they peg it to that. That might bring the inflation rate down.

Would the gentleman just give me a sense of how taking it into account might affect what is today the general inflation rate? Let's assume it is inflated because it is focused on the urban areas where the cost of living is higher. Would it reduce the overall inflation rate?

Reclaiming my time, this very constructive colloquy, I think, underscores the importance of actually having hearings in Congress. This is legislation that sprung out of someone's head somewhere and then appeared on the House floor without actually having a hearing where we could examine it.

The gentleman raises a profound point that might lead us to question inflation statistics generally. I just don't know. At this point, we are all guessing because we haven't had a hearing, and we don't know the facts of it.

Unfortunately, we are going to be sending people, including me, to the floor to vote on this amendment without really having any information about the background.

Obviously, we want to make sure that military personnel, farm households, and residents of rural areas are included, forcefully, if they are excluded now, even if that means bringing the inflation rate down, something I imagine President Biden would quite enjoy.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chair, the first thing I want to note about this amendment is that it now expands the definition of a major executive order to include those projected to cause an annual gross budgetary or economic effect of at least $1 billion, which includes those orders that would have a positive economic effect of $1 billion or more, thereby just adding a lot more paperwork, a lot more unnecessary bureaucratic entanglement.

The distinguished chair of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, I think, mentioned in passing the Biden administration's attempt to roll back some of the radical deregulatory program of the Trump administration, which undermined regulations favoring automobile safety, train safety, water safety, land safety.

Again, we have what appears to be another clever talking point by the GOP, and the whole country is now up in arms over what took place in East Palestine, Ohio. We see precisely what the human effects and consequences are of their radical, pro-corporate deregulatory agenda, dismantling the rules and regulations that protect public safety and public welfare.

That is really what is going on over there. It is not about having a couple of little analyses stuck onto an executive order every 4, 5, or 6 months. We know exactly what the real economic program is.

This bill is a camouflage, just like this amendment is, and I urge the body to oppose it.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I want to just clear up a couple of things.

First, I heard the very distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado mention job creators. I assume she was responding to President Biden since 12 million new jobs have been created under President Biden, whereas millions of jobs were lost under the prior President, who may be a favorite of the gentlewoman's.

I also wanted to make just a brief semantic point because the gentlewoman was making a grammatical error that I heard some of her colleagues make before. I believe she referred to a ``Democrat solution.'' I heard another Member talk about a ``Democrat Member'' and a ``Democrat plan.''

I just wanted to educate our distinguished colleagues that ``Democrat'' is the noun. When you use it as an adjective, you say the ``Democratic Member,'' or the ``Democratic solution,'' or the ``Democratic plan.''

I assume it is a good faith grammatical error the first few times, but after people are corrected several times and they continue to say it, it seems like it is an act of incivility, as if every time we mentioned the other party it just came out with a kind of political speech impediment like, ``Oh, the banana Republican Party,'' as if we were to say that every time we mentioned the ``banana Republican Member,'' or the ``banana Republican plan,'' or the ``banana Republican Conference,'' but we wouldn't do that.

So out of pure political courtesy, when it is an adjective, refer to the ``Democratic Congresswoman'' or the ``Democratic Member.''

Having said that, I would like to say that I favor the Boebert amendment. I think it is really the Raskin amendment because none of them apparently caught the fact that their reporting requirement wasn't to be published until I told them. I actually read the bill, and I said there is no publication of it. So this amendment follows through on the fact that I pointed out to them that their bill didn't even call for publication of the inflation information which they thought was so essential.

Madam Chair, I am afraid I am going to have to support the Boebert amendment, because I think I am the genesis of it.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Madam Chair, I would ask if the gentleman would be willing to yield for a couple of questions?

Again, there was no hearing in committee, so I don't understand this. This might be a great idea, but I would like to figure it out.

It requires that any inflationary estimates prepared incorporate the inflationary impact of debt servicing costs, which seems perfectly logical to me.

But is there a reason to think that the current inflation rate, as defined by the U.S. Government, does not incorporate the inflationary impact of debt servicing costs?

Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman for the purposes of a colloquy.

So that is true across the board in terms of all of the economic indicators that we read about, whether it is the OMB or the-- --

Madam Chair, I reclaim my time and thank the gentleman for his kind answers.

This really is why we have hearings in Congress, because it feels like we are just posting a lot of graffiti on a wall here.

I don't know how the inflation rate is calculated. I don't know whether the import of this amendment would be to double count debt servicing costs because I don't know which government agencies actually incorporate debt servicing costs and which don't.

One thing I do know is that if the gentleman has the greatest amendment of the year, it is still basically irrelevant because it does nothing. In other words, it is not going to do anything to bring down anybody's debt servicing costs, which I agree are huge, unlike, for example, what the Biden administration has done in terms of student debt by acting dramatically to bring it down--even though there are people from across the aisle who are in court today, I believe, trying to get that thrown out and trying to bring everybody's student loan debt back up--that is real economic action.

In any event, what this is about is pure symbolism. In other words, they are asking for a reporting bill that will only apply if there is a $1 billion plus impact, and the good gentleman comes forward to say: Make sure, Mr. President, when you are doing your calculations, that you include debt servicing costs.

I don't know. You could take it or leave it. It doesn't do anything for people who are staggering under debt. The way that the Biden administration is trying to act, for example, is to deal with the problem of student debt or the way that we have acted to try to help people who are suffering under mortgage debt, that is real economic action.

I am just going to have to consider it carefully, given the information we have. But I will end with a plea for the good chairman of the Oversight Committee, the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky: We have to have hearings on these bills, so we know what we are talking about, because I feel like we are dancing in the dark here.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I just repeat my puzzlement from before.

Perhaps if Mr. Cloud would yield for another question.

What is the inflationary impact of debt servicing costs? Have there been any economic studies on that?

Madam Chair, I yield to the gentleman for a colloquy.

Madam Chair, I reclaim my time.

I think the gentleman raises a very interesting point. I would love to know the answer as to whether or not it is actually incorporated today in what the inflationary or deflationary effects are of debt servicing costs. Obviously, this bill and this amendment would not have any impact on what those debt servicing costs are, but I don't see much of a problem of adding this language to the hortatory nature of the legislation.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I will just end on this one with this thought.

The majority comes forward with a plan to say we want to know an estimated inflationary impact of an executive order, and then we have a series of Christmas tree amendments saying, make sure you include the cost to rural areas; make sure you include the cost of debt servicing. I would like to know the overall costs.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I want to speak in strong support of the gentlewoman's amendment. I thank Ms. Jackson Lee for her leadership in terms of real economic policy, which is about making the government an instrument of well-being and public good.

We know we have serious philosophical differences with our friends across the aisle. Many of them wanted to dismantle Social Security and Medicare. When President Biden arrived the other day, a lot of them retreated very quickly from it.

I would be delighted if someone wants to challenge me on that because we have all the quotations from all the Republican Senators and Representatives that said it was time to get rid of Social Security and phase it out, adopt means testing, increase the age, so on and so forth.

That is a real policy difference. What they have done here really falls under the category of symbolic politics. The good gentlewoman from Texas has done her best to make this meaningful, and I thank her for giving me the opportunity to say that.

Madam Chair, I rise in favor of Mrs. Lee's excellent amendment here which makes both powerful economic points and powerful constitutional points.

The economic point is that Congress must act in order to bring down inflation, Congress must act in order to promote employment, and we have acted in partnership with President Biden to do just that in the Inflation Reduction Act, in the infrastructure act, and in a whole series of bills that we have used to bring inflation down and to dramatically lower unemployment in the country.

But she is making also, I believe, a very powerful constitutional point because part of what gets lost in the symbolism of this legislation--a mere messaging bill about having executive orders over $1 billion, which describes a handful in a year attached in an inflation description--what gets lost is that the Constitution in Article I sets it up so that Congress is the major definer of economic policy in the country.

It is Congress that is supposed to be laying and collecting taxes and impost and dealing with the debt of the country. It is Congress that regulates commerce among the States and with foreign countries.

So the failure to come forward with real productive legislation on inflation is also a surrender to the executive branch, and we don't need to do that.

So we should be working with the executive branch as we have done in the Inflation Reduction Act, with the infrastructure bill, in lowering prescription drug costs, and in lowering the costs for diabetics to get their insulin shots to $35 a month. That is the real pathway, not just a bunch of reporting bills.

As far as I understand, the amendment just adds one more unnecessary detail to the report, creating greater administrative burden and taxpayer costs that are still undefined. It is unclear why it is necessary. If it is necessary, it should be adopted across the board. But, of course, we had no hearing so we can't really understand what the merits of the proposal are, but right now, it just seems like a lot more bureaucratic paperwork.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, for those of us who have had the privilege of serving in the United States Congress for a period of time, going through any number of Speakers and majorities, what we are doing this evening in the midst of the needs of the American people is deja vu.

Let me say that the Congressional Review Act process, which we debated just a few hours ago, would have added a 60-day review period on crucial, lifesaving executive orders that would have been necessary or have been necessary to save lives and to improve the quality of life of the American people--in this instance, rulemaking.

It is obstructionist. It was passed, the Congressional Review Act-- obstruction--some 60-day review period, adding a Senate vote, a House vote, a veto, and coming back again when American lives are in jeopardy for healthcare, for the environment, for labor laws, any number of things, for criminal justice reform, any number of rules that would create a better pathway for Americans.

Now, we come with the REIN IN Act. I am positive that we did the REIN IN Act some years ago. It sounds very familiar. This one deals with allegedly providing some pathway for dealing effectively with inflation.

I would hope my colleagues would be as interested in raising the debt ceiling, which will stop the bleeding of the American people and busting their wallets open because we have refused to pay our bills.

This seems to ignore the work that President Biden has done to cut everyday costs for working families, bring global supply chains back in, alleviating debt for students and veterans, and fighting climate change.

This part of their larger plan to cut Medicare, Social Security, and other crucial programs are in this bill.

Eliminating the language that we did with my amendment further helps to ensure that improper and ambiguous congressional interference in executive orders as sought through this legislation is appropriately curtailed.

The executive orders that are well vetted by the President of the United States that have helped populations that have been in trouble, that have brought about a reckoning of police reform, these executive orders would not be interfered with under the pretense of trying to suggest an inflationary impact.

Why not applaud the work that President Biden has done, as I said, with alleviating the debt of students and veterans, of which there are those now fighting this in the Supreme Court, the work he has done on climate change, and the work we have all done--Democrats and the President--to preserve Medicare, Social Security, and other critical programs?

I ask my colleagues to support Jackson Lee amendment No. 6 to stop the interference that has no benefit and impact on any inflationary uptick. What we need to do is work together to provide a budget, to be able to overview the budget, and to be able to come together to raise the debt ceiling to pay America's bills.

Madam Chair, I ask my colleagues to support amendment No. 6, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, how much time do I have remaining?

Madam Chair, this is deja vu. I know the intent of this legislation, the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act.

What I would say is my amendment clearly wants to take away destructive interference in the work that the executive has to do through vetting their executive orders by not insisting on extra baggage that would not in any way provide any relief to inflation.

What will provide relief to inflation would be to ensure that the debt of students is reduced, that veterans are protected, that Medicare and Social Security are protected, and that the debt ceiling is raised.

My amendment, by eliminating the language, further helps to ensure that improper and ambiguous congressional interference with executive orders, as sought through this legislation, is appropriately curtailed because the more you delay constructive executive orders to help the American people, the more you undermine the relief of the American people and help to bring down inflation.

Madam Chair, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 347, the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation or REIN In Act, an unnecessary, ambiguous and improper reporting bill that undermines the important steps President Biden has taken to cut everyday costs for working families.

H.R. 347 would require the Administration to publish the inflationary impact of executive orders that are projected to have an annual budgetary effect of at least $1 billion.

While I stand in strong opposition to this measure, I have offered five amendments, four of which were made in order, to H.R. 347 in order to help address the some of ambiguity and unnecessary oversight of presidential executive orders this bill unfortunately puts forth.

Jackson Lee Amendment #5 restricts the bill to only cover Executive Orders as listed in Sec. 2 (d)(2)(A) (emergency assistance) and (B) (national security or treaties).

The Jackson Lee Amendment #5 would change the legislation to make only those executive orders that qualify as emergency assistance and national security or treaties to go through mandatory inflation forecasting, instead of requiring that all executive orders outside of the scope of emergency assistance or national security or treaties go through mandatory inflation forecasts.

Jackson Lee Amendment #6 inserts into Sec. 2 (a) line 10 ``or'' after ``inflations'' and Strikes Sec. (a) lines 11-14, to clarify and make consistent with economic policy on inflationary impacts and effects.

Jackson Lee Amendment #6 would eliminate some of the ambiguous and extraneous language in this bill.

Jackson Lee Amendment #7 adds at the end of section 2(d) the definition to ``significant impact'' in Sec. 2 (a), which states as follows: ``The term ``significant impact on inflation'' means an Executive order was estimated to increase or decrease Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1% percentage point over the course of a year.''

Jackson Lee Amendment #7 would define significant impact in regard to the increase or decrease of the Consumer Price Index.

It is important that Significant Impact to the Consumer Price Index of inflation is specified to eliminate ambiguity in the application of the term ``significant''.

In keeping in line with nationally recognized standards for what is deemed to be ``significant'' in the context of inflation, many economists agree that an increase or decrease in the Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1% percentage point over the course of a year is considered to be a significant impact on the Consumer Price Index over a year.

Jackson Lee Amendment #8 adds at the end of section 2(d), (4) ``The term ``quantifiable inflationary impact'' means an Executive order was estimated to increase or decrease Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1% percentage point over the course of a year.''

The Jackson Lee Amendment #8 would specify the meaning and application of what quantifiable inflationary impact is to eliminate ambiguity and uncertainty in its contextual use for the purpose of this legislation.

And so again, keeping in line with nationally recognized standards, many economists agree that a ``quantifiable inflationary impact'' is deemed to occur when there is an increase or decrease in the Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1% percentage point over the course of a year.

While H.R. 347 is a clear overreach and would impose improper and onerous restrictions upon the Executive Branch, the Jackson Lee Amendments will be offered to this body as mere attempted to help ensure that the inappropriate limitations as proscribed by this legislation are curtailed in its effort to limit the authority of the Executive orders.

The ability of the Executive Branch to carry out its Executive Orders without improper or overbearing congressional restrictions on such actions is of utmost importance to our Democracy and the continued growth and betterment of our country.

And while executive orders are not expressly addressed in the U.S. Constitution and no statute grants the President the general power to issue them, executive orders have always been accepted as an inherent and necessary aspect of presidential power and function of our government since its inception.

The legislation, however, oversteps the boundaries of our nation's governmental functions by attempting to override critically important and vital actions our democracy needs and has historically accepted as an inherent facet of separate functioning branches of our government.

Imposing such broad and ambiguous oversight of executive orders as proposed by H.R. 347 would only serve as an unnecessary and improper restriction on the powers of the Presidential executive orders, while also perpetuating a waste of government resources and further hindering American economic growth.

As such, I urge all my colleagues to oppose this onerous and unnecessary bill.

Madam Chair, I ask for support of the Jackson Lee amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I request a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, we cannot run the government by ambiguity, confusion, lack of clarity, and just throwing language down on the floor and expecting all the pieces of government to work together.

I question whether this legislation and the legislation dealing with the Congressional Review Act is ever going to be passed in the United States Senate. I question that. It would have been nice to have hearings and work together.

This amendment tries to bring clarity. My amendment tries to define the term ``significant impact.'' The term ``significant impact on inflation'' means an executive order was estimated to increase or decrease Consumer Price Index inflation by at least

1 percentage point over the course of a year. This amendment does clarify that the meaning of ``significant impact on inflation'' is quantifiable in any effort to make such a determination.

The lack of specificity of applicability for when this unnecessary legislative restriction would take place, and mandate, will be imposed on all executive orders, as provided for in the bill, is unnecessary, time-consuming, and a waste of resources. In fact, I don't even know how any President would get through it.

I am not saying that executive orders should not have their necessary oversight. They can. The Oversight and Accountability Committee and other jurisdictional committees can have oversight.

If this is to reduce inflation, all this bill will do is raise the costs of any act or action that is asked for in the executive order.

Jackson Lee amendment No. 7 would help to ensure that any attempt to restrict the powers and authority of executive orders is curtailed in a manner that would limit such mandate to apply only in such scenario whereby economically accepted standards are considered and applied.

For example, ``significant impact on inflation'' is limited to instances where there has been an increase or decrease in the Consumer Price Index, the CPI, inflation by at least 1 percent over the course of a year. With that in mind, we would have clarity; we would have an understanding; and we would be able to know whether this is irrelevant, burdensome, and overly excessive in doing the work on behalf of the American people.

Madam Chair, I ask my colleagues to support Jackson Lee amendment No. 7, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), the ranking member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from Maryland for further clarifying our intent.

Usually, inflation, by the economists, is around 2 percent. To have this amendment that indicates 1 percent, it gives some clarity of a significant impact.

I would say this: I believe in oversight, but I don't believe in obstruction, intrusion, and stopping work that impacts the American people.

My amendment provides clarity so that the work for the American people can go forward. It is evident that President Biden has had a significant impact on bringing down inflation and building a better quality of life.

Madam Chair, I ask my colleagues to support Jackson Lee amendment No. 7, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Madam Chair, all of us have seen the great work of the Oversight and Reform Committee in the two initiatives that we have had today.

Clearly, we are all sort of stretching to try to understand the impact of the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act, and we are trying to find the substance.

So my previous amendment was dealing with significant impact, and now we are dealing with quantifiable inflationary impact. I wanted to add as to what this actually means.

So my amendment says quantifiable inflationary impact means an executive order was estimated to increase or decrease Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1 percentage point over the course of a year knowing that inflation is usually 2 percent a year.

I am just trying to find light in darkness and to try to understand what this bill is doing and to give those who are in government to do good, those who are trying to solve problems with a legitimate executive order to have some guidance that relates to inflation and not be of no substance with a bottomless pit, to be very honest with you, Madam Chair.

I am hoping my colleagues will join me in trying to give some guidance and some quantifiable definition to quantifiable inflationary input by tracking it to what has traditionally been by economists inflation 2 percent. We just went to 1 percent to give some definition to this to give some ability for anyone to understand how to analyze or utilize this legislation if it ever gets to the President's desk.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Madam Chair, let me quickly say that, again, the Jackson Lee amendment before us is keeping in line with nationally recognized standards.

Many economists agree that a quantifiable inflationary impact is deemed to occur when there is an increase or decrease in the Consumer Price Index inflation by at least 1 percent and over the course of a year. It will not gut the bill. It will let us try to understand the bill.

While H.R. 347 is a clear overreach and would impose improper and onerous restrictions upon the executive branch, the Jackson Lee amendment tries to find some common ground that will be offered to this body as a mere attempt to help ensure that the inappropriate limitations as prescribed by this legislation are curtailed in its effort to limit the authority of the executive orders.

Madam Chair, I ask my colleagues to consider and vote for the Jackson Lee amendment No. 8, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.J. Res. 30, a Congressional Review Act joint resolution of disapproval to nullify a popular and sensible rule issued by the Biden-Harris administration last year.

Workers should be able to invest their retirement savings in a way that reflects their values, such as combating climate change, without sacrificing investment returns.

That is why the Biden-Harris administration issued a rule to clarify that retirement plan fiduciaries may consider the economic effects of climate change and other environmental, social, and governance factors, or ESG factors, when they make investment decisions for participants in retirement plans.

Now, to be clear, this rule is not an ESG mandate.

Additionally, the rule does not change the fiduciary standard to which professionals who make investment decisions for retirement plans are bound. They must still prioritize the interests of retirement plan participants and cannot sacrifice investment returns to pursue ESG goals.

Let's be clear. Consideration of ESG factors is not at odds with making a profit. In fact, workers' profit is still central, but if a company has negative externalities, such as carbon-intensive business practices, vulnerability to sea level rise, high liability risks, or a record of mistreating workers who may go on strike, its stock could suffer in the long term.

Workers often contribute to their retirement for decades before drawing down on their savings, so it makes sense that retirement plan beneficiaries must consider the long-term time horizon when making investment decisions.

Finally, there is widespread support for the Biden-Harris administration's rule. Of the comment letters submitted on the proposed rule, 83 percent of the letters submitted by institutions like corporations, financial firms, and labor organizations supported the rule.

Over 97 percent of the letters submitted by individuals supported the rule. Simply put, the Biden-Harris rule reflects the best interests of the American people and our economy.

We should not get rid of this popular and reasonable rule by this resolution. The rule just simply allows retirement plan fiduciaries to appropriately consider ESG factors.

Retirement fiduciaries, not House Republicans, are best positioned and bound by law to make prudent investment decisions on behalf of retirement savers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Casten), the co-chair of the Congressional Sustainable Investment Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Omar), a distinguished member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Vargas), a co-chair of the Congressional Sustainable Investment Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Magaziner).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, during this debate, we have heard a lot about ESG investing. It is clear there is a difference of opinion on it, but whether Members of Congress see things the same way is not the point.

What matters is that the Biden-Harris rule puts the decisionmaking when it comes to considering ESG factors where it belongs, in the hands of retirement plan fiduciaries who are best positioned and bound by law, which has not changed, to act prudently on behalf of plan participants. That is where the decisionmaking should stay.

They, not Members of Congress, know what is in the best interests of their plan participants, and they are bound by their fiduciary responsibilities to do the right thing.

Now, when supporters say that a fiduciary should not consider nonpecuniary factors, they ignore the fact that ESG factors can, in fact, be pecuniary, because often ESG factors, such as sea level rise, can have a profound effect on the value of the investment. Those who recognize this should be able to make reasonable investments based on that knowledge.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record several letters from organizations opposed to H.J. Res. 30. Eighty-three percent of institutions that submitted comments were in favor of the underlying rule. These organizations, who are opposed to H.J. Res. 30, include the AFL-CIO, Americans for Financial Reform, Public Citizen, SEIU, Environmental Defense Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, and others.

Mr. Speaker, these organizations have diverse missions, but they all agree that H.J. Res. 30 should be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record two letters from financial services firms who submitted supportive comments on the underlying rule. These firms are BNY Melon Investment Management and Lazard Asset Management, who have trillions of dollars in assets under management.

BNY Mellon,

December 13, 2021.

Office of Regulations and Interpretations,

Employee Benefits Security Administration,

U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, DC.

On behalf of BNY Mellon Investment Management, thank you

for the opportunity to submit comments on the notice of

proposed rulemaking entitled ``Prudence and Loyalty in

Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder

Rights'' (the ``Proposal'') published by the U.S. Department

of Labor (the ``Department''). We strongly support the

Department's efforts to clarify the regulatory treatment of

environmental, social, and governance (``ESG'') factors under

Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of

1974, as amended (``ERISA'') following the publication of

``Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments'' and

``Fiduciary Duties Regarding Proxy Voting and Shareholder

Rights'' (together, the ``Current Rules''). To continue the

Department's efforts to add clarity to the use of ESG factors

by fiduciaries we suggest the Department add clarification in

the rule or preamble that a fiduciary can use a screen to

consider ESG factors based on the fiduciary's determination

that a particular ESG factor will impact investment value

consistent with Section 2550.404a-1(c)(2) of the Proposal.

BNY Mellon Investment Management is a division of BNY

Mellon, one of the world's largest financial services groups.

With a presence in 35 countries, BNY Mellon looks to connect

investors with opportunities across every major asset class.

BNY Mellon Investment Management encompasses BNY Mellon's

affiliated investment firms and global distribution

companies, constituting over $2.3 trillion in AUM (as of

September 30, 2021).

BNY Mellon Investment Management follows a multi-boutique

investment management model that weds the specialist

expertise from its investment firms offering solutions across

every major asset class, backed by the strength, stewardship,

and global presence of BNY Mellon. Each investment firm has

its own unique culture, investment philosophy, and

proprietary investment processes, and provides a global

perspective. Our seven majority owned investment firms, are

as follows (all AUM figures as of September 30, 2021):

Alcentra ($41.0B), ARX ($7.0B), Dreyfus Cash Investment

Strategies ($342.7B), Insight Investment ($1,100.0B), Mellon

($448.6B), Newton Investment Management ($139.1B), and Walter

Scott ($99.9B).

At BNY Mellon Investment Management our Responsible

Investment (RI) approach varies across our investment firms,

but the effective stewardship of our clients' assets is

common to all and core to our own purpose. Many products or

solutions offered by BNY Mellon Investment Management examine

ESG factors in their investment processes and decision-making

to better manage risk and generate sustainable long-term

returns. Six of our investment firms--Alcentra, ARX, Insight,

Mellon, Newton, and Walter Scott--are signatories of the

Principles for Responsible Investment (``PRI'').

As we have noted in a previous comment letter, over the

past decades, fiduciaries and investment managers have come

to appreciate the materiality that ESG factors can have on

investment value. We welcome the Department's clarifications

to the Current Rules regarding the use of ESG factors and the

exercise of shareholder rights. The acknowledgement by the

Department that climate risks and other ESG factors can be

and often are material to investment risk and returns will

better allow fiduciaries to mitigate risk and enhance returns

based on evaluating ESG factors.

Within the last decade, a deep body of research has been

produced that demonstrates the material influence of ESG

factors on the profitability of an enterprise and the

performance of its securities. For example, weak control of

environmental activities such as pollution, over-consumption

of raw materials or lack of recycling of waste materials

readily leads to volatile or lower achieved margins or

financial penalties that reduce investor returns. Similarly

with social issues: high staff turnover, high strike rates or

absenteeism or death or injury rates have all been linked to

lower productivity and poor quality control. Regarding

governance, we know from years of empirical observation that

poorly managed issuers can seriously damage investor returns.

To ignore the entire category of information and analysis

that comprise ESG factors, therefore, could be deemed an

abrogation of a fiduciary's responsibility to consider all

material information when assessing the risk and return of

any investment opportunity.

The Proposal appropriately balances the materiality that

ESG factors can have on investment value with the

Department's longstanding principles that a fiduciary's

duties of prudence and loyalty require the fiduciary to

consider factors that are material to investment value. In

particular, a fiduciary should not subordinate the interests

of plan participants and beneficiaries to other objectives,

nor sacrifice investment return or take on additional

investment risk to promote goals unrelated to the plan and

its participants and beneficiaries. We specifically believe

that the proposed removal of the definition of ``pecuniary

factors'' and the revision to the Current Rules providing

that a fiduciary's evaluation of an investment or investment

course of action should be based on factors that ``are

material to investment value'' both clarifies the rule and

ensures that the rule reflects the analysis performed by

fiduciaries when making investment decisions.

We also support the removal of the special rule prohibiting

certain investment alternatives from being considered

qualified default investment alternatives (QDIA) because the

investment references ESG factors. The QDIA restrictions in

the Current Rules add uncertainty and would be difficult to

apply. We agree with the Department that there is not a

reason to prohibit fiduciaries from prudently selecting a

fund that meets the QDIA requirements and includes the

consideration of ESG factors.

We support the Department's efforts to reduce the

uncertainty in the market caused by the Current Rules and we

suggest additional clarification regarding the use of

screens. We believe this clarification could further reduce

uncertainty that might otherwise prevent fiduciaries from

considering ESG factors which are expected to enhance

investment value and performance or improve investment

portfolio resilience against the potential financial risks.

As noted above, we support the removal of ``pecuniary

factors'' and that a fiduciary's evaluation of an investment

or investment course of action should be based on factors

that ``are material to investment value''. We think that the

Department could add additional clarity to the rule or

preamble by clarifying that the proposed rule does not per se

prohibit a fiduciary from using a screen on investments based

in whole or in part on ESG factors.

A common method used by investment managers to incorporate

ESG factors into the assessment of investment risks and

returns is the use of screens. As described in the Proposal,

``negative screening refers to the exclusion of certain

sectors, companies, or practices from a fund or portfolio

based on ESG criteria.'' The Proposal's discussion of the

benefits that can occur from the use of ESG factors in the

assessment of investment risks and returns relies on sources

that studied the impact of investment managers using screens

based on ESG factors. However, the Current Rules and some

past guidance regarding the use of ESG factors could be read

to preclude the use of screens based on ESG factors.

We suggest that the Department clarify in the final rule or

its preamble that the investment prudence duties and the

investment loyalty duties under Sections 2550.404a-1(b) and

2550.404a-1(c), respectively, do not per se prohibit the use

of screens. For example, it should be permissible for a plan

fiduciary to select investment managers and funds that use

screens to the extent that doing so would otherwise be

consistent with its duties. It should similarly be

permissible for any such investment manager to select an

``investment course of action'' that uses a screen to the

extent that the resulting investment strategy would otherwise

be consistent with its duties. Such a clarification would

provide certainty to fiduciaries seeking to use ESG factors

in the assessment of investment risks and returns in

accordance with their prudence and loyalty duties. It would

further ensure that plan participants realize the full

benefits of fiduciaries using ESG factors as described in the

Proposal.

We strongly support the Department's efforts to bring

clarity to the use of ESG factors and the exercise of

shareholder rights by plan fiduciaries. We believe the

Proposal and the changes suggested here will promote

retirement income security and further retirement savings by

allowing fiduciaries to better manage risks and improve

investment returns.

Sincerely,

Hanneke Smits,

Chief Executive Officer,

BNY Mellon Investment Management.

Mr. Speaker, this is just a small sample of the financial industry's support for the underlying rule. We should not overturn the rule with this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, for these reasons, I oppose H.J. Res. 30, I encourage all Members to do the same, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 166 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

House Resolution 166 provides for the consideration of two measures, H.R. 347 and H.J. Res. 30. The rule provides for H.R. 347, the REIN IN Act, to be considered under a structured rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability or their designees and provides for one motion to recommit. The rule makes in order 15 amendments.

Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 30, a resolution of congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to ``Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights'' under a closed rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce or their designees and provides for one motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and in support of the underlying bills.

Today, the Republican majority is holding the Biden administration accountable. The American people sent the Republican majority to Washington to exercise a moderating influence on the executive branch and as a

check against President Biden and the Democrats' worst policy impulses.

Mr. Speaker, over the past 2 years, the American people have been at the mercy of President Biden's and the Democrats' reckless tax-and- spend agenda. Having survived those 2 long years, the American public could not stomach 2 more years of unified Democratic control in Washington, so this past November, American voters elected a Republican majority in the people's House to address the people's business.

Instead of devoting all of their time and effort to service industries and projects favored by Democratic consultants, the green lobby, and woke political activists, Republicans are working at breakneck pace to address the issues that the American people actually care about: protecting the retirement savings of hardworking Americans from Green New Deal radicals. The House GOP is the last line of defense between the American people and President Biden's inflationary agenda.

Mr. Speaker, I also commend Mr. Barr for introducing H.J. Res. 30 so we can bring this important piece of legislation to the floor today. Without his leadership on this issue, pensioners and retirees would be defenseless against the designs and machinations of a loud but vocal minority planning to conscript the retirement savings of retirees and American workers to pursue an investment agenda that is not founded on a fiduciary responsibility to maximize a return on investment.

Democrats understand that their Green New Deal agenda is politically toxic as far as the American public is concerned. They know that their radical energy agenda has been exposed and laid bare to the American people. For that reason, they have orchestrated and overseen a coordinated campaign to capture the boardrooms and the pension funds, seeking to implement the change that they simply could not achieve at the ballot box.

What Democrats are trying to achieve would be more intellectually and morally defensible if they had the courage to bring these measures to the floor for a vote in the people's House. In fact, the Democrats could not take that risk, Mr. Speaker. It would be a highly embarrassing spectacle exposing their woke, ESG agenda as toxic to the American public. Instead, Democrats and their radical environmental NGO allies will continue to work in the shadows, strong-arming and intimidating corporations and investors alike, using any means necessary to conscript the life savings of pensioners and retirees to implement a dangerous and illiberal investment strategy centered not on the welfare of retirees but on their favorite pet political projects.

In addition to this being an unwise and undemocratic investment strategy, Mr. Speaker, if this investment strategy is allowed to metastasize, the traditional energy sources that heat our homes, clean our drinking water, and power our electrical grid will be seriously placed in jeopardy.

This isn't hypothetical, Mr. Speaker. Democratic policies are pushing our electrical grid to the brink. Reliable baseload generation sources are being phased out at a dizzying pace. The traditional energy projects that make the comforts of modern life possible are being prematurely marked for closure, not because they are uneconomical but because they run counter to the Democrats' crusade against fossil fuels.

In my native Texas, Mr. Speaker, I am in communication with capital market professionals who inform me that their firms will no longer invest in energy projects that provide dispatchable and reliable power to the electrical grid; not because these projects are undeserving or won't deliver a return on investment, but for fear of being named by Democrats and their corporate allies for being insufficiently committed to their radical environmental agenda.

I am reminded of the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Mr. Speaker: ``You will know them by their fruits.''

Democrats are once again looking to conscript the life savings of pensioners and retirees in this Green New Deal agenda.

Mr. Speaker, this is the deleterious downstream effect of the Democrats' Green New Deal and their moral panic. It is jeopardizing the health and well-being of American citizens in pursuit of a disturbing, dogmatic energy agenda that is myopically focused on potential environmental impacts rather than the flourishing and prosperity of all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, the conventional wisdom would suggest that President Biden and his Democrat allies in the House would step back and reassess their policies after having lost their majority in November.

One could be forgiven for thinking that having been humbled at the ballot box, Democrats would benefit from reflection and introspection to try to understand why American voters rejected their policies so thoroughly in the midterm elections.

Unfortunately for the American people, President Biden and House Democrats have doubled down on their inflationary and unpopular agenda all in the wake of November's election.

Instead of triangulating and trying to better align themselves with the priorities of everyday Americans, the Biden administration has continued this barrage of unpopular executive orders. From trying to cancel student loan debt to increasing household costs for American families through increased energy and food costs, Democrats and President Biden have demonstrated once again they are simply out of step with the American public.

This is why Republicans are united in holding the Biden administration accountable for their reckless economic policies that seek to supercharge and further embed inflation into the American economy. The Republican majority is proud to bring to the floor H.R. 347, the REIN IN Act, which would mandate that the Biden administration undertake and produce a report for any major executive order that it issues that would detail the inflationary impact of said executive action.

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

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

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

You know, driving to the airport early Monday morning on the way back up here for another week in Washington, the price of gas was $3 a gallon in Texas in February.

Now, that is bad news because by the time you get to Memorial Day, the peak of the summer driving season, gasoline is always a dollar more than it is in February.

So, look. The President was able to bring the price of gas down artificially by depleting our emergency reserve, and who does that? Who does that?

Who spends all of their emergency funds and says, ``Good on me. I brought the prices down,'' when you didn't do anything to increase the supply?

Now, here is the good news. One of the reasons we aren't surrounded by a lot of our colleagues right now on the floor of the House debating this rule is because Members, both Democrats and Republicans, are in committees, in the committees of jurisdiction, doing the actual work.

I left a markup from the Energy and Commerce Committee, the Subcommittee on Energy, looking at ways to increase our supply of energy to do what? To bring down the cost of energy for consumers.

That seems like a logical thing to do. We see what the administration's response was. It was to sign an executive order to say, we are going to cut off a pipeline so you can't bring any more product into the United States.

You can't ship that product from Canada down to Port Arthur, Texas, and refine it with Texas jobs. No. They cut that off. As a consequence, it has to be made up somewhere else.

The good news is we didn't run out, and there is additional supply. There is additional energy to be pumped, harvested certainly in the Permian Basin and the Delaware Basin of Texas.

The good news is that producers, a lot of small and independent producers, are doing just that.

So rather than having to go hat in hand to OPEC or OPEC+--I guess, now because they added Russia to OPEC--rather than having to go to a dictator in Venezuela, you can buy your oil and gas from the United States of America.

Who is doing that? Well, Germany is doing that. They hastened the development of several LNG offshoring plants so that they could bring in that Texas product to heat the homes of Germans who have been cut off by Vladimir Putin in an attempt to starve Europe for energy during the Ukraine war.

You know, one of these bills that we are debating, the rule that we are debating will allow a bill to come to the floor for debate on looking into the cost of executive orders.

I already referenced one of those executive orders; one done on the very first day of the Biden administration, which was to negate the Keystone pipeline, but there were others.

The Committee for Responsible Budget actually has calculated a total of $1.1 trillion in executive orders in the last 2 years and 2 months since this President has taken office.

Digging into the numbers--and, of course, it will be a big story over at the Supreme Court later this week--but the President wants to cancel student loan debt; that is $750 billion.

Shouldn't that be a consequence that is argued in Congress? It is not done just through an executive order.

Look, we wisely rejected a monarchy, and we said we want government with the consent of the governed. That means that all of the decisions do not flow from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

By virtue of the fact that we have a divided government, the people's House is supposed to weigh in on these decisions.

They are not made unilaterally by the President of the United States, which, by definition, is what an executive order is.

So we have $185 billion in increased staff benefits. Maybe good; maybe not. The gentleman from Massachusetts and I agree on programs that tackle hunger in this country, but shouldn't we as Members of the people's House have the opportunity to debate that rather than the decision simply made by one individual down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?

We already talked about the Keystone pipeline. Canceling ANWR. Canceling ANWR, the exploration and development of oil in that plain in Alaska, which has been--honest Injun.

If Clinton had not prevented that, if President Clinton had not prevented that in 1997, that would be a producing field today that would reduce our trade deficit, to be sure.

So we would be able to produce American energy but also would have had a profound effect on the budget because, in fact, Mr. Speaker, you will recall it was a budget bill that year where President Clinton then blocked the development in the ANWR.

What about repealing President Trump's rules on the waters of the United States and the NEPA streamlining rules?

All of these things have been done as executive orders since this President took office, and the consequence, the fiscal consequence, the downstream consequence has been profound.

So, look. I want to encourage everyone in the House today to support these measures when they come to the floor.

If you want to remake financial markets, you can't do that by congressional fiat. You have to have the courage to bring that measure to the floor for a vote.

I would encourage Members additionally to support the REIN IN Act, and this measure will act as an important check on the Biden administration, forcing President Biden to grapple with the harm that his executive orders are inflicting on the long-suffering American people.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans remain united in pursuing legislative policies that put the American people at the forefront, put them ahead of the special interests, put them ahead of the army of lawyers and lobbyists that occupy this town. Let's put the people of America first.

The text of the material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:

Amendment to House Resolution 166

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 3. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the

House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the

resolution (H. Res. 178) affirming the House of

Representatives' commitment to protect and strengthen Social

Security and Medicare. The resolution shall be considered as

read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on

the resolution and preamble to adoption without intervening

motion or demand for division of the question except one hour

of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and

ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or

their respective designees.

Sec. 4. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H. Res. 178.

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