H.Res. 712

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 712 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the ranking member of the Rules Committee, 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

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 712.

Madam Speaker, last night the Rules Committee met and reported out a rule, House Resolution 712, providing for consideration of H.R. 4365, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2024, under a structured rule.

It provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the

chair and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations or their respective designees. It also makes in order 184 amendments, more than 75 percent of those eligible for consideration. Finally, it provides for one motion to recommit.

The rule also makes in order H.R. 1130, the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2023 under a structured rule. It provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective designees. It provides for one motion to recommit.

Finally, the rule makes in order H. Res. 684 under a closed rule. It provides 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees.

I rise today, Madam Speaker, in support of the rule and the underlying legislation.

Madam Speaker, as Members are aware, the House has previously debated an identical rule covering H.R. 4365. This was a fulsome and passionate debate, and I said most of what was needed to be said from my point of view during that debate, but I will make a few key points about this bill again now.

The bill before us provides full funding for our national defense. It appropriates $826 billion in new discretionary spending, which is a modest increase of $300 million over the President's budget request of nearly $29 billion or 3.6 percent over the FY 2023 enacted level.

Madam Speaker, this truly is a good bill, one that I think the House can and should be proud of. It makes appropriate investments in the military and ensures that dollars are being directed where they are needed the most. It invests heavily in our servicemembers, providing them with a 5.2 percent pay raise. It provides continued funding for new advanced weapons systems, ensuring that the military has the force it needs to confront any foe anywhere in the world at any time, and it continues to expand the Navy to protect the freedom of the seas and invests heavily in Asia and the Pacific theater where China continues to expand its own military might in anticipation of a confrontation with the United States and our allies.

Madam Speaker, providing funding for our national defense is both Congress' privilege and its responsibility. In order for our brave men and women in uniform to do their jobs, Congress must do its job. Today, we can take that first step toward doing so.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1130, the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2023. This bill removes regulatory barriers for the construction and licensing of new liquid natural gas or LNG import and export terminals.

Madam Speaker, when the Republican majority took over in January, we committed to unleashing America's energy potential. For too long, regulatory roadblocks and active hostility of the Biden administration have made it difficult to expand production of America's abundant energy resources, but despite the Biden administration's hostility, America is today the top producer of natural gas in the world.

From my home State of Oklahoma, this is not an academic point. Oklahoma is the fifth largest natural gas producing State in the country, with nearly 350,000 jobs in the State tied directly to natural gas production. It is a critical part of my home State's economy.

In recent years, innovation and new technology have revolutionized and expanded the production of natural gas, both in Oklahoma and in the United States as a whole. The people of my district are very proud to be part of that revolution. There is still more to be done, and the passage of H.R. 1130 will help make it easier, cheaper, and quicker to bring new LNG export terminals online.

It is no exaggeration to say that American natural gas is a critical part of the world's energy mix, particularly in Europe, which previously sourced much of its natural gas from Russia, and we are capable of achieving more. The end result will be a strong future for us as we create more high-paying jobs and maintain America's energy independence and a strong future for our friends and allies around the world who can source their energy needs from us rather than from vicious dictators like Vladimir Putin.

Madam Speaker, all in all, this is a strong bill, one that I am certainly proud to support.

Finally, the rule makes in order H. Res. 684, which condemns New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham for her executive order attempting to subvert the Second Amendment rights of New Mexico's citizens.

As Members are aware, earlier this month, Governor Grisham issued an executive order purporting to suspend the right of New Mexicans to open and concealed carry of firearms. Governor Grisham claimed that this was necessary in order to deal with a public health emergency.

Of course, this claim is patently absurd, and there is not now, nor has there ever been, a public health emergency and exception for constitutional rights. The right of Americans to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution, and a constitutional right cannot be subverted at the whim of an elected official.

Last week, a Federal judge in New Mexico agreed and issued a restraining order blocking implementation of this patently unconstitutional order.

Governor Grisham has rightly received condemnation on a bipartisan basis for her actions. H. Res. 684 will give all Members of Congress an opportunity to do so officially and on the record.

It is always appropriate for the House to take time to reaffirm our values as a country and to protect the constitutional rights that form the foundation of our Republic.

Indeed, I urge all Members to do so and speak with one voice, reminding all Americans that when it comes to their constitutional rights, the House of Representatives has their back.

Madam Speaker, I urge Members to support both the rule and the underlying bills, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I would again return my friend's compliments. I enjoy working with him on the Rules Committee. We have been there together a long time. There is nobody I have a higher professional and personal regard for than my good friend.

Now honestly, Madam Speaker, I wish I had his talent for colorful rhetoric. I particularly like the ``Groundhog Day'' reference. I remind my friend, while there are some similarities, the movie had a happy ending. Everybody learned some lessons and they got to where they needed to be. I think we may be involved in a process something like that.

I disagree with my friend that the issues being brought up in this bill are trivial. Defending the United States of America is not a trivial thing. You can agree or disagree with the bill, and I will talk about that in a minute. That is fair enough. I don't consider that trivial.

Providing natural gas in abundance and at modest prices to Americans and having that resource to deal with our adversaries overseas, who often use energy as a weapon, and to be able to provide for our friends and allies reliable energy is not a trivial matter. It is an extraordinarily important matter.

The 10 million Americans that work in the domestic energy industry think what we are doing here is the right thing to do. I don't consider their interests and their views trivial. I am just very privileged to represent many people that have that point of view and are involved in that particular profession.

Finally, I don't consider standing up for the Second Amendment a trivial thing. We have a Governor that issued an order that a Federal judge immediately overturned and Democrats in New Mexico condemned-- elected Democrats, law enforcement officials. It is actually one of the areas that is usually a contentious issue that we had really strong bipartisan agreement. We think it is important to make my point.

My friends have a different point of view. That is fair enough. Just express it, and we will move on. Again, we don't consider defense of the Constitution to be trivial.

I agree with my friend about a number of things, and we have had this discussion, frankly, as friends in the Rules Committee.

I agree with him about shutdowns. I do not think it is an appropriate tactic, and I hope that we are able to avoid one. There will be an appropriate time, I am sure, when we discuss with our friends how to do that, but we need a negotiating position. We are working toward that, and we hope we will get there.

Believe me, I am well aware that we have a Democratic Senate. This House has done wonderful work on things like H.R. 1 to deal with energy, H.R. 2 to deal with our border. We send them over there and they are never picked up, never heard of again unless we can snatch pieces out of them here or there and attach them to one of these broader agreements, as we were able to do on the debt ceiling crisis over permitting of facilities, both for renewable and nonrenewable energy.

Again, it is a difficult legislative process, and I agree it is going to be complicated, but our goal is to get to the same place; that is, to make sure that the government is funded, and also, that we advance shared values that we have and have an open and honest discussion with the United States Senate. When we do that, we have been able to find some agreement.

My friend likes to point out--all my Democratic friends like to point out regularly--well, gosh, why are you passing appropriations bills that are less than to the letter agreed on? Well, gee whiz, where I come from, if you can do something for less money, that is usually a good thing to do. I am never going to apologize. If we see a different way to get to a policy objective that costs less money, that is a good thing to do.

Now, I know when we discussed this last night, the Senate is consistently appropriating above the agreed-upon number. All the appropriations bills, or pretty much all of them that they have dealt with so far, are at higher levels. So guess what? We will get into negotiation. My guess is they will come down some. We will come up some, and we will find some sort of common deal. That is just the way politics work. I am never going to be critical of my colleagues for trying to do something cheaper and save money.

I remind my friend of the condition in which the Democratic majority left

our fiscal finances. We are running a $1.7 trillion deficit this year. That is bigger than all the discretionary budget of the United States of America. We have not had a Democratic President submit a budget that comes into balance--not in a decade, but ever, since Bill Clinton.

President Obama never did. President Biden never has. I don't think any future Democrat will.

We used to have Democrats in the 1990s that we disagreed with, that we fought, but they said, well, let's try to get to a balanced budget within 10 years, and they managed to do that.

My friends have basically abdicated that debate. They just let it go on and on out to infinity. Even President Trump submitted budgets that within a decade came into balance. I didn't always agree with some of the decisions. I don't think either party has done a very good job.

My friend and I have had this discussion in dealing with the real drivers of debt: that is mandatory spending; that is Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. We need to have that debate. I hope the Presidential contest has it. I note at least some of the discussions we have been having in our caucus talk about having a debt commission attached to some of this, so perhaps we can make some modest steps.

My friends heard me talk about my Social Security bill, which is really modeled after what was done in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, Tip O'Neill, and Howard Baker working together, a commission, then Congress voting--including, by the way, the President of the United States at that time who liked commissions, voting for the commission, for the deal, and it worked. It improved the fiscal solvency of the country. It extended the life of Social Security, a program I know that we both support.

Again, you may think these are trivial issues. We don't. We think we have a long process in front of us. These are steps in the right direction on the appropriate end that won't be enough.

Madam Speaker, the last point I will make--and my friend and I just disagree here--look, defense is a very different thing than any other part of the appropriations process. Most appropriations process is about things that are desirable and good.

I have worked pretty hard on cancer research, so my friend's points are well made there. I think those are valuable investments.

Defense is about threats. We had a peace dividend in the 1990s. You know why we had it? Because the Soviet Union had collapsed, and we could prudently save money in defense.

I will tell you right now, I would go higher than the number here; but if the number we have on defense is outrageous, your first call ought to be to the White House because it is basically the President's number. We actually pulled back from where our defense appropriators wanted to go and a lot of our defense hawks wanted to go because we did think addressing the horrific deficits that were inherited from the last Democratic era meant we even had to make sacrifices here.

I am not really comfortable with it, but it is a step in the right direction. We might not even had to have that if you hadn't, through reckless spending, unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. I actually have a 40-year-old son. He had never seen anything like what happened in the Biden administration because of irresponsibly passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and another $700 billion much- misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

We inherited a mess. We inherited inflation. We inherited record deficits.

It is a pretty tough deal. My friends don't want to address it. Well, this majority is going to do its best to address those issues. We do struggle and disagree, and sometimes I get frustrated with some of my friends on my side of the aisle about tactics.

My colleague is right about one thing, and I will agree 100 percent. There is no objection to this rule on the basis of the rule. There is nothing wrong with it. It has 184 amendments. You can agree or disagree with the bill, but it is a good rule.

In my view, there is nothing wrong with the bill, other than I would like to have spent a little bit more money. Like any bill that spends this amount of money, everybody could do it a little bit differently.

People are trying to make other points unrelated to the bill, and I will agree with my friend that that is unfortunate. I don't think that is a good way to legislate. I think my colleagues should look at the legislation in front of them. If they agree with the rule, they ought to vote for it. If they disagree, it is fair enough to vote against it. However, if they agree with the basic bill, don't relate it to something else and try to use it as a weapon. We don't have many Members who do that, but we have a few.

As my friend knows, we have a very narrow majority. He has been here once or twice himself when they had narrow majorities. It is part of the legislative process. We will continue to work it.

My hope today is we will advance this rule. It will open the way to advance what I think is a good Defense appropriations bill, and we will continue to move legislatively as rapidly as we can. We will work and, at the appropriate time, I am sure, work across the rotunda with Democrats in the Senate and probably in this Chamber with some of my Democratic friends. Hopefully, we will avoid a government shutdown.

The most important thing today: Move the rule. Move the bill. That is what we are going to try to do.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I want to respond to some of my good friend from Pennsylvania's points, and some of them I agree with. I do think shutting down the government is not an appropriate tactic. We agree on that.

You know, linking them to election results is really an interesting exercise. The government shutdown that I think my friend thought was in 2011, if I am correct, and I may be wrong, was really the one in 2013. We actually picked up seats in 2014. I don't think that is why we picked up seats. My friends always forget that they shut down the government in 2017, and they won seats in 2018. So you can pretty much play these numbers however you want.

The important point, which my friend makes and I agree with, is that shutting down the government is bad for the American people. It is an abdication of our responsibility. It is something we should not do. I have never supported it in the past. I hope we manage to avoid one now. I think that is exactly what the Speaker is engaged in trying to accomplish, whether my friends agree with his methods or not.

I will tell you, I am mystified by this concern about the agreement. Again, we agreed on top-line numbers. We didn't say we are going to the top-line numbers. This is the top-line number, and if we can do it for less and persuade the Senate that that is a good idea, then I don't see that as a bad thing.

If my friends are concerned about keeping agreements, maybe they ought to call over to their friends in the United States Senate who are producing bill after bill that are above these numbers.

Guess what? I suspect each side is positioning for a negotiation, and magically, we probably won't be too far off, if we come to an agreement, of the numbers that are laid out in the debt ceiling deal.

I am not telling you this is the most efficient way to legislate, but I have seen it before, and we are seeing it from both sides right now.

In terms of the budget, I tell you what, I am interested in the opinions my friends have on the budget because they didn't bother to do one for the 4 years they were in the majority. I am thrilled they are actually marking up a budget in the Budget Committee. I give Chairman Arrington a lot of credit for doing it. It is hard to do. My friends didn't do it for 4 years because they couldn't do it because they couldn't come to an agreement.

As a matter of fact, I remember those 4 years I used to serve on the Budget Committee. You couldn't get a budget out of the Budget Committee that you controlled.

Do you want to talk about dysfunction? The Budget Committee sets the top-line number for all spending. Maybe that is why we overspent so much. As a matter of fact, you deemed budgets in the rule.

So I would agree with you. We should probably be sitting down and figuring out ways to run our fiscal affairs better and particularly do it in a more cooperative way because, as my friends point out, they do control the United States Senate and the United States Presidency.

However, please don't lecture me on how you do budgets when you had the House, the Senate, and the Presidency and could not write a budget in 4 years and get it out of your own committee, let alone bring it to this floor. Some of those years you weren't operating with a five-seat majority. You just couldn't get the job done.

We are trying. I commend the Budget Committee. I hope they bring one out here. I will be disappointed if they don't, but at least they are making the effort.

Finally, again, to my friends, I can't figure out whether you want the Speaker to succeed or not because there are lots of expressions that you feel sorry for him in the job he has. Don't worry, he likes the job he has. He works hard at it every day.

I think he is a good Speaker. He delivered on a debt ceiling deal that my friends even in the end came around and voted for. He delivered one that was a heck of a lot better because it had some genuine concessions in it, in terms of energy production and in terms of setting top lines.

We are on the eve of another kind of negotiation, and maybe we can find common ground again. I genuinely, quite frankly, hope that we do. In that process, there will be plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who don't like what the end product is, and they will vote accordingly. That is fair enough.

This is just kind of the way it works around here right now, and I think the Speaker is doing a terrific job of trying to work the process, trying to make sure legislation moves across the floor in regular order, and trying to get to numbers that begin to bring down this horrific deficit that my friends left the country with, with no plan to deal with it.

Nobody in the White House has a plan. The President has never submitted a budget that comes into balance. He won't talk about entitlement reform. He rules it out.

Sorry, if you are serious about the budget deficit, you do control two-thirds of this process. I know it is inconvenient when we bring up the fact that we are spending a lot more money and you have no plan to deal with it, but that is what we are going to do.

We will see. The American people can make a choice in the next election about that, but I am not going to be critical of my friends. Even when I am critical of their tactics, and I am sometimes, I am not critical of people who are trying to lower the budget deficit and trying to restore a measure of fiscal sanity to this country. That is something the Democrats used to care about, did care about when I first got here. They totally abandoned it during the Obama Presidency.

When my friends want to get serious, they will have a willing negotiating partner on the budget.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford), my very good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. In closing, I urge all of my colleagues to support the resolution.

The rule will make in order three bills.

First, it makes in order the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2024. It will provide full and complete funding for our Armed Forces and Defense needs and provides the resources necessary to defend freedom around the world.

It makes in order H.R. 1130, Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act. We think that is important.

My friend had an interesting discussion about LIHEAP. I actually share my friend's view. It is an important program. I remember when I chaired the subcommittee on Appropriations, I had to actually reverse a cut ordered by President Obama of $300 million in his own budget, and we stopped that from happening.

People throw out numbers, and then you work it through. I always call a Presidential budget a bargaining position. I think the same thing tends to be true of congressional budgets, but we will work that through.

The real cause of lack of heating, though--let's be real about this-- is not LIHEAP and whether it is funded or not. It is whether or not there is natural gas to heat it in the first place. My friends have done everything possible to increase the cost and limit the availability of the very product that they want to provide with a government program.

It would be better for every single American if you would just simply be pro-energy production in our country. It is okay to be for renewables. I am for renewables. My State is number one or two in the country in wind power, well ahead of a lot of other progressive States.

We just think what works is what you ought to do. We have got a lot of wind in Oklahoma. It makes a lot of sense, so we use it, and, if it lowers emissions, we think that is good. Natural gas, by the way, has been the single biggest driver of lowering emissions. My friends have done nothing but make it harder in that industry. Frankly--and I mean this with all due respect--I hear people in that industry and companies in that industry vilified routinely. If I said those things about people in your respective States engaged in energy or in other kinds of production, you would be appalled, because you know those people.

I have got millions of people in the energy industry. I have thousands of people in my district that go out and work on rigs. They go out and lay pipeline. They go out and find oil and gas. It is hard work. They do that, and they give many parts of the country that don't have energy production the cheapest energy in the world outside of a couple of petrostates, and the most secure product, and they have tripled production in petroleum since about 2006. Yet, the price of gas goes up--it is a lot less here than it is almost anyplace in the world--and then they say, oh, my gosh, they are profiteering. No, there are market forces out there. That is off the subject.

I would just say my friends are worried about the cost of heating. LIHEAP is a good program. I support it. I have proven that over and over again. Please, let's make sure that we have the gas in the first place.

Finally, my friends dismiss the importance of the Second Amendment because they disagree with it for the most part. That is fair enough. All we are saying is we want the opportunity to actually invest things.

My friend made a couple of other points I just want to quickly address, because I want him to be under no--

and I don't think he is--under any illusion. I hold Senator Murray and Senator Collins in very high regard. I have worked with them both. I have worked with Senator Murray, in particular, for 8 years, either as chair, or ranking member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies when she held the same respective position. We came to a deal almost every year. The gentlewoman is a good legislator, and Senator Collins is legendary.

What the Senate is crafting over there right now is well above the agreement that my friend thinks we are violating. It is pretty easy to declare emergencies. Yes, I would love to spend more money on defense. I have said that on this floor. I have said that during this debate. Let's call it emergency and heap it on.

They are laying out a negotiating position. It is fair enough. My guess is we are going to end up pretty close to the numbers we agreed upon.

My friends have been very critical of my leader, the Speaker of the House, and that is fair enough. This is politics. I will tell you this: You guys said he wouldn't get elected, and he did. You said he wouldn't get a bill across the floor to deal with the debt ceiling and then negotiate a deal, but he did. Let's wait and see how this plays out.

My friends need to remember, when it comes to these fiscal issues, they are the ones that never passed a budget for 4 years. They are the ones that left us with a $1.7 trillion deficit, and they have got the White House and the Senate and have not produced any plan to address it, nor have they been willing to sit down and talk to us about, in a bipartisan way, how could we start dealing with what we all know is the big driver, and that is entitlement programs.

We have a lot of problems in front of us. We can point a lot of fingers. Let's do the right thing today, though, and start addressing them.

The right thing today is to move ahead and pass this rule, get onto a debate about what we think are important issues. Defending the country is certainly an important issue. Securing our energy future is important, and dealing with constitutional rights, and we will continue to discuss and work on these other matters.

I will agree with my friend. I am not for shutting down the government. I hope we don't get there, and I always worry about that as we approach these kind of deadlines.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding me the time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back on the House floor with the gentlewoman from Indiana. It is great to be with her, and so far, she is allowing me to actually speak and hasn't called for me to be silenced.

The last time we debated, I stated an uncomfortable fact about he who shall not be named and the gentlewoman had me silenced, had my words stricken from the Congressional Record.

You just have to love that, Mr. Speaker. The party of free speech that rails against woke this and cancel culture that, and calls us snowflakes, can't handle it when someone comes down here and tells the truth. They try to silence the people they disagree with. It is really quite stunning.

Here is more of the truth, and let's see if I am allowed to talk this time.

Mr. Speaker, under Republican control, the House of Representatives has become a place where trivial issues get debated passionately and important ones not at all. What we are dealing with today is a bunch of weird, whacky, poorly drafted culture war nonsense.

This is all just a waste of time. These bills aren't going anywhere. It is not even political theater. It is theater of the absurd.

The government shuts down in a few days, and instead of actually working with Democrats to keep the lights on, instead of actually doing something to fix the problems that the American people want us to fix, my Republican friends are doing nothing.

The roof is on fire, and instead of calling 911, they are sweeping the floors. I mean, it is beyond nuts.

Last night in the Rules Committee, during our hearing on this rule, I had some Republican Members telling me they didn't like my tone. They didn't like the fact that I said we don't share the same values.

I am sorry I hurt people's feelings, Mr. Speaker, but the truth is the truth. We don't all believe in the same things. When it comes to my friends on the other side of the aisle in this Chamber, we really don't share the same values. I know many of my friends on the Republican side are nice and good people, but their ideas are not nice and are not good.

Let me just give you a couple of examples.

Democrats want to make sure that our kids go to college and get a good education that prepares them for the workforce, and instead of working with us, Republicans go on and on about woke this and woke that in our schools.

Apparently, anyone who wants to teach facts is woke nowadays. They want colleges to stop being ``woke,'' even though they can't quite define what that even means. It is all political BS, Mr. Speaker.

Here is another example. Democrats actually want an economy that works for everyone, and thanks to the Biden-Harris administration, we are fighting to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, but not Republicans. They are talking about woke economic policies.

I don't even know what they are talking about or what they mean, but do you want to know what people back home talk to me about? They are asking me: Why are Republicans trying to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires? Why are Republicans trying to go after Social Security and Medicare?

Another example, Mr. Speaker, is that Democrats actually care about strengthening and protecting the Violence Against Women Act, but not Republicans. A majority of their Conference voted against extending the Violence Against Women Act. Let me say that again: A majority of their Conference voted against extending the Violence Against Women Act.

Now, they have the nerve to come down here and talk about violence against women and use it as part of their sick ploy to go after immigrants. Give me a break. Their bill is so poorly written that it could hurt survivors of domestic violence.

I could go right down the list. It is obvious to me that, at some point, the RNC talking points went out to everybody, and those talking points said woke, woke, woke. Now, we have to waste time on this trash.

It is just another week of the GOP circus. As I have said before, calling this a clown show is an insult to actual working clowns.

Most of all, it is an insult to the American people for Republicans to use these hallowed Halls and to spend hours and hours of time this week on these absurd, awful bills. Again, none of them are going anywhere.

The reason to be in Congress is to help people. That means putting people over politics. It means not caving in to the most extreme members of your party. It means getting stuff done, which is a radical idea.

None of these bills, as I said, are going anywhere. Yet, here we are, playing these absurd, ridiculous games.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the chairman of the Rules Committee, but let me just state for the record that nothing he talked about will be at all impacted by any of the stuff that we are talking about here today. None of these bills are going anywhere.

If you want to pass legislation to address some of the issues that were raised, maybe we ought to work in a bipartisan way. Maybe it ought not to be ``my way or the highway.''

These aren't serious pieces of legislation. These are press releases. Let's all be honest with the American people about that. This is not serious legislating. We haven't done serious legislating here in a long time.

Mr. Speaker, I will zoom in a little bit on this Congress in general. I just mentioned that this is the most dysfunctional Congress in history. If anyone wants proof, look no further than this resolution: five more closed rules that allow zero amendments to come to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, for folks who don't know, a closed rule means no amendments. It means: Take it or leave it. If you have a good idea and want to improve a bill, too bad.

This is how they govern in Russia and China, and that is what the Republicans are turning this place into.

With these five closed rules they are bringing to the floor today, Republicans are breaking their own record for shutting down debate. With today's vote, there will be 106 closed rules in this Congress-- 106. This is now officially the most closed Congress in the history of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, what gets me is that my friends on the other side have been totally fooled. They were tricked by their own leadership, first by Speaker McCarthy and now Speaker Johnson.

The gentlewoman from Indiana and her colleagues on the Rules Committee were promised a more open process. They were told the Rules Committee was going to be different, more open, would have more regular order and more amendments, and more debate.

Speaker McCarthy was even blackmailed into putting members of the Freedom Caucus on the Rules Committee to guarantee a more open process, but apparently, it didn't matter because he totally broke his promise, and now Speaker Johnson is shredding it.

During the first 9 months under Speaker Johnson, we saw 64 closed rules, even more than the 42 closed rules we saw under Speaker McCarthy. They traded a bad Speaker for an even worse one. Republican leaders have blocked 5,799 amendments from even coming to the floor. Mr. Speaker, 5,799 amendments have been blocked from coming to the floor by the Republican majority.

By the way, they are not just Democratic amendments. They blocked Republican, bipartisan, and Democratic amendments. They blocked an amendment to disrupt the smuggling of U.S. firearms across the Mexican border. They blocked an amendment to combat fentanyl trafficking at ports of entry.

Holy hell, Mr. Speaker, they even blocked my amendment to protect food for seniors who participate in the Meals on Wheels program. They have even blocked over half of their own Republican Members' amendments.

Let me say that again. Most Republican amendments have been blocked by this Congress. These amendments have been prevented from even seeing the light of day or getting a debate on the House floor. There have been 98 amendments that Rules Committee Republicans had either authored or supported that have been blocked by their own majority.

When you are on the Rules Committee, you like to have a little juice, but 98 of your amendments, Republican amendments, have been blocked by your own party. That is almost 100 amendments, and that is just Rules Republicans.

I am sure they would have loved to have had the opportunity to debate their amendments on the floor. If Rules Committee Republicans can't get amendments, how the hell do you think the rest of us are doing?

Republicans said they wanted an open process in this Congress. They want an open process, my foot, Mr. Speaker.

Under this majority, the Rules Committee has become a place where democracy goes to die. Their Members should be outraged with the Speaker and this leadership just as much as Democrats should be. Again, 106 completely closed rules blocked all amendments--a shameful statistic, an all-time authoritarian high set under this Republican majority.

Let's look at the results. Look at what they have to show for it. Republicans had the most unproductive Congress in the history of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, 26 days we went without a Speaker because they were fighting with each other. Weeks were wasted with failed rule votes while they argued among themselves instead of negotiating with Democrats.

There were broken promises on the appropriation process where they kicked the can down the road with another failed CR, bringing us to the brink of catastrophic debt default and then asking Democrats to bail them out. Mr. Speaker, 10 months of passing no legislation through the Rules Committee that ever became law.

I congratulate my friends. In addition to being the most incompetent, dysfunctional, unproductive Congress in American history, they now have also presided over the most closed Congress in American history. Well done, well done, and they are not done yet. We have to live through 3 more months of this. God help us.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I reiterate what the gentleman from South Carolina just said. We have different viewpoints and different values.

I am sorry that he feels he lives in a wrecked country. I don't believe that. I think the United States of America is the greatest country on this planet, and I am proud to serve in Congress to try to help the people of this country. I would never refer to this country as a ``wrecked country.''

Again, the gentleman who just spoke, I thought when he was appointed to the Rules Committee, he was appointed to make sure that we had a more open process.

I regret to inform the gentleman that 106 closed rules slipped by him this Congress. I appreciate him standing in the breach.

By the way, when he refers to all the amendments that were rejected as being dumb, 50 percent of them were Republican amendments.

I think 27 of your amendments were denied. I wouldn't classify them as dumb, even though I may disagree with the intent.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a list of the 106 closed rules issued by the Republican majority in the 118th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, beneath all these statistics about closed rules are actual ideas that are being blocked from being debated on the House floor.

These are thoughtful proposals that Members have worked hard to develop, ideas to help actual people, and they deserved a debate in an up-or-down vote.

They are proposals like this: An amendment to disrupt the smuggling of U.S. guns across the Mexico border to help cartels, an amendment authorizing funding for DHS to combat fentanyl trafficking at our ports of entry, and an amendment to prevent cuts to Meals on Wheels.

Those are home-delivered meals to seniors, Mr. Speaker, and that was my amendment, by the way, so I can assure you that it was a very, very good idea.

They even blocked an amendment to provide postpartum mental health information to pregnant students, and that was a Republican amendment.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans haven't just blocked amendments by reporting out closed rules. Their structured rules, the rules that allowed a few amendments, have also continually blocked thoughtful, rule-complied amendments.

They seem especially focused on blocking Democratic ideas from a debate in an up-or-down vote on the floor. A quarter of their structured rules--get this--blocked all Democratic amendments.

Now, let me quickly just list a few ideas that Republicans were either too afraid to debate or couldn't spare 10 minutes for consideration on the House floor: An amendment to protect children from getting asthma; amendments to ensure the regulation of dark money in politics, and to prevent corrupt pay-to-play political donation deals with Federal contractors; and an amendment to provide cancer screenings to Federal firefighters as part of their DOD annual physicals, when we know they are exposed to cancer-causing chemicals as part of their jobs. There is simply no excuse for this, Mr. Speaker.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the gentlewoman from Minnesota, I was confused when she said, you don't offer alternatives. That is what amendments are. They are alternative ideas.

I just went through a list of some of the alternatives we wanted to offer dealing with firefighters and cancer screening, dealing with children with asthma, and dealing with making sure senior citizens have adequate access to nutrition. Those are alternatives. Those are ideas.

My friends, unfortunately, are in control of this place, so they get to bring the bills to the Rules Committee.

We try to present alternatives through the amendment process, but here is another alternative. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 16, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2023.

Mr. Speaker, the bigoted hatred that we are seeing directed at immigrants in Ohio and across the country is sickening. According to research done by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, there has been a rise in conspiracy theories that stigmatize minorities and promote hatred of ethnically diverse communities.

Get this. Politicians' use of bigoted rhetoric can also play a role in hate crime incidents. It is sad, but to be frank, we didn't need researchers to tell us this.

We can see and we can hear it from the Republican Party every single day, and it does a grave disservice to the Dreamers, to TPS holders, and to DACA recipients in this country who only know America as their home.

These are taxpayers, small business owners, educators, and critical parts of our communities. Dreamers were brought to the United States as children through no fault of their own, and it is past time to grant them the pathway to citizenship that they rightly deserve.

Mr. Speaker, let me be clear. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to fix our broken immigration system and secure our border, but unlike the messaging bills before us this week, this is a bill that actually does something, and it is actually bipartisan. It sends the message that we are sick of the vitriol and hate crimes against this community and that we value their many contributions that make this country a better place.

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, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar), a great leader, to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia), who will also speak on the importance of defeating the previous question.

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

You have got to love when Republicans try to talk tough about immigration reform. I just want to remind my colleagues that one of the most conservative Senators in the United States Senate is from Oklahoma. He wrote a comprehensive immigration reform bill that has some very tough provisions in it. Their standard-bearer, the man who I cannot name on the floor for fear that my words will be taken down, told Republicans to not allow it to come to the floor for debate or a vote.

They would rather have a campaign issue than to solve a problem. I mean, let that sink in. Let that sink in.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from the National Institute of Justice titled: ``Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S.-born Citizen Rate.''

Mr. Speaker, all day long, Republicans spout hateful rhetoric about undocumented immigration and crime because they want us to be scared and they want to divide us, but their claims are simply not rooted in truth. In fact, undocumented immigrants are less likely, not more, than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes, including violent crime.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article by the CATO Institute titled: ``Sanctuary Jurisdictions in Florida Do Not Have Higher Crime Rates.''

Mr. Speaker, there is no evidence, none, either in Florida or in the rest of the country that sanctuary cities result in more crime. There is none, zero. However, that won't matter to Republicans because they are unmoved by the facts.

Mr. Speaker, earlier I listed some examples of ideas that Republicans blocked from even being considered on the floor. Here are a few more. I just want people to appreciate this.

An amendment that would protect access to IVF for Federal employees, they blocked it.

They blocked an amendment to require a study for Tribal consultations before enactment of an oil and gas bill that could affect their subsistence resources.

An amendment to make critical targeted investments in small-town police departments for the recruitment, retention, mental health support, and training they need to protect themselves and their communities, they blocked that, too.

They blocked an amendment to ensure continued access to emergency care for pregnant servicewomen at military treatment facilities.

Maybe Republicans don't believe in IVF or any of these other ideas, but they can just vote ``no.'' Why block these ideas from even being debated unless they are afraid they would pass?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to close yet. There may be someone else.

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

I want to get back to this extraordinary closed House. I just want everybody to appreciate how awful this process is.

Here are yet more examples of ideas that were too scary, too revolutionary, too controversial to even be debated on the House floor, according to this Republican majority:

An amendment to provide grants to organizations that are helping to transition servicemembers to civilian life, including job recruitment training, they blocked that. I mean, what are they thinking? Who does that?

They blocked an amendment to ensure that students with dietary restrictions like lactose intolerance can have an alternative to whole milk at lunch. Is lactose intolerance now woke? I mean, I don't get it. That was blocked.

They blocked an amendment to ensure that a bill wouldn't cause our domestic energy prices to increase.

I ask, again, what is the majority afraid of? I mean, we have our differences. We ought to have substantive debate on the floor and then have votes. I am willing to bet there are some thoughtful Republicans who would support some of these amendments that I mentioned here.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining.

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

We have heard a lot about wokeness here today, but I want to focus on the woke Democratic ideas that Republicans have blocked in this record- breaking closed Congress. I mean, ideas like protecting IVF, fighting fentanyl trafficking, and making sure lactose-intolerant students have something nutritious to drink at lunch. Wow. I mean, that those ideas are woke is crazy.

There have been 106 closed rules. That is a big number, a record- breaking number, but much more important is what that number represents. These ideas and all the other blocked amendments I highlighted would have helped everyday Americans. Is that woke? Is it woke to try and keep kids from getting asthma, to provide job training to veterans? To provide cancer screenings to firefighters, is that woke?

Mr. Speaker, I don't know what my Republican colleagues are afraid of. Maybe they are afraid to vote ``no.'' Maybe they are afraid to vote ``yes.'' This is Congress, Mr. Speaker. We are here to take hard votes. This record-breaking number of closed rules is a disservice to the people the Republicans represent.

Mr. Speaker, while Republicans want to talk about being woke, I wish instead that they would wake the hell up and do the people's business. For example, I don't know, maybe pass a bill to prevent a government shutdown. What we are doing today is merely a political exercise. Their obsession with trying to inject politics and culture wars into everything is getting really old, almost as old as the Presidential nominee.

Let me just say I love this place, and I love all the different things that we have been called on to do. I will just say this, Mr. Speaker: I want everybody to join with me and let's end this. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Is this Groundhog Day, Madam Speaker? Back again once more to debate a rule for bills that were considered and failed to make it to the floor.

You can't make this stuff up.

So what changed? Not the bill text, not the fact that we have less than a week before the government shuts down. Maybe the minds of a few of our colleagues across the aisle? I guess we will see later today.

Look, none of my remarks are directed to the gentleman from Oklahoma. I respect him personally and professionally. I think the world of him. I don't envy the task he has of trying to defend these bills or this process, but what the hell is going on in his Conference?

The truth is that under Speaker McCarthy's weak leadership, this Republican majority is a total failure; an unmitigated disaster.

Those aren't even my words. That is what one of your own Members said on TV a few nights ago about the process playing out in this Chamber right now.

First, we have this absurd nonbinding resolution condemning the Governor of New Mexico for trying to keep her constituents safe from gun violence.

Just to explain to folks who may be watching, this resolution does nothing--not a thing.

It is a press release. It doesn't go to the Senate. It doesn't go to the President. It does nothing.

So we are doing that, and we are doing nothing right now to avert a government shutdown. This place is becoming a Chamber where we debate trivial issues passionately and important ones not at all.

Then we have a ridiculous bill about liquified natural gas. The House has already passed this bill not once, but twice. Of course, it makes sense to waste more time passing it again when a shutdown is looming and Republicans have no plan to keep the government running, right?

This rule will also bring to the floor the Republicans' Department of Defense appropriations bill. Yes, this bill

has horrible, harmful policy riders that strip people's rights and push MAGA culture wars. It also reaffirms the Pentagon's bloated budget at a time when the far-right wing nuts are holding up all other appropriation bills because they feel they don't cut enough money for programs that help everyday Americans. We still don't have a plan to fund the government.

Madam Speaker, I know if some of my Republican colleagues had their way, we would pass their continuing resolution that contains mindless, across-the-board spending cuts.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to cut funding for cancer research, for our Head Start programs, for air traffic safety, for border security, and a 65-percent cut to heating assistance for families just as it is starting to get cold. Talk about cruel.

Now, these cuts aren't just cuts, they cost us. Do people realize what Head Start does? It invests in kids from low-income families so they can have more opportunity in life. The return on investment is almost $10 for every $1 spent.

Cancer research. Do Republicans realize that investing in cancer research saves us healthcare costs not just now but down the road, and it saves lives.

Their appropriation agenda cuts all this and more.

Madam Speaker, you know where Republicans refuse to cut from? This bill, the Pentagon, the biggest, most expensive bureaucracy in our Federal Government: the Department of Defense.

So for whatever reason, it is okay to cut programs like WIC that help feed pregnant moms, but they can't find a single weapon system where there is any waste? I am happy to provide numerous articles and reports from my colleagues about the cost overruns in so many of these wasteful missile systems.

The Defense spending bill, which is the most extravagant Defense spending bill ever, failed a rule vote on Tuesday because the Republican Conference is in absolute chaos. Best I can tell, no one on the other side of the aisle has any objection to the top-line number in the Pentagon bill, but yet they voted down the rule just the other day.

I know that whipping votes can be difficult, but the number of backroom secret deals and late-night seances Republicans have had to hold this year to revive bills from the dead is astounding, and I am afraid things will only get worse as we near September 30.

Republicans are acting like the end of the fiscal year just snuck up on them.

News flash: The deadline to fund the government isn't some big secret. They have had months to prevent a government shutdown. The reality is that not once--not once--have Republicans given us a bill that could keep the government open.

Republicans barely control one-half of one branch of government. Yet, they act like they are king of the hill, like it is their way or the highway, that nothing else matters.

The only way this slim House Republican majority can keep the lights on is if they get Senate Democrats and the President to agree, but they haven't even begun to reach across the aisle to negotiate because they are busy negotiating amongst themselves.

Hell, at this rate, they might not even be able to get Senate Republicans to agree given how extreme their Conference has become.

Madam Speaker, this majority is a failure. The clowns are running the circus. The day Speaker McCarthy handed his gavel over to the clown show, this was the inevitable outcome. There is a different path that we can choose right here and right now: Work with Democrats to prevent a shutdown; work with us to keep the government open; work with us to honor the deal you made earlier this year.

It is time for the ringmaster of this circus, Kevin McCarthy, to stand up to the clowns and say enough with the extremism and the blackmail. Stop wasting time and work with us to get this done in a bipartisan way.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Before I yield to my next speaker, I want to clarify for the record because I don't want to be misunderstood or mischaracterized because I have great respect for the gentleman. I never said the Defense appropriations bill was trivial. I said the Defense appropriations bill was bloated and filled with the kitchen sink of MAGA culture wars.

On the second bill, the LNG bill, I said it was repetitive because we have passed it twice already. It is going nowhere. We are going to pass it a third time, and that is going nowhere at a time when our government is about to shut down. To take up a bill that is repetitive and that is going nowhere seems like not a good use of our time.

I did say that the nonbinding resolution on guns was trivial because it doesn't do a damn thing. We are living in a country where we have massacres occur on a regular basis, and we can't get any legislation to the floor. The only bill we get to the floor on guns is a nonbinding resolution that does nothing and that doesn't even go anywhere. It doesn't go to the Senate. It doesn't go to the President.

I want to be clear on what I said because I think it is important. I do believe that this bill, this nonbinding resolution, is an example of how trivial issues get debated passionately here and important ones not at all.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Boyle), the ranking member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Speaker, the concern we have over here on this side of the aisle is that there are Members on the Republican side who seem to be cheering on a shutdown.

The other day, in an interview with ``PBS NewsHour,'' a fellow colleague on the Rules Committee, Mr. Norman of South Carolina, was asked how likely a shutdown is, and his response was: It is 100 percent.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a Truth Social post from yesterday by Donald Trump opposing the GOP's continuing resolution.

Mr. Speaker, the twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former President is weighing in on the funding fights within his party, and ultimately he is endorsing actions that will shut down the government.

Now, I have a strange feeling my Republican counterparts will gladly comply at the expense of the American people because everybody on that side of the aisle is so frightened of him.

The gentleman from Oklahoma was talking about a shutdown in 2018. I don't disagree with my friend that there was a brief shutdown in early 2018 that a lot of people don't remember because it was so short. I should point out that Republicans were in charge of the House and in charge of the Senate at the time. I know some Democrats were pushing to help Dreamers as part of a funding deal, but that brief, symbolic shutdown lasted less than 72 hours, mostly over the weekend and, if I remember correctly, had no lasting impact.

Now, compare that to the 5-week Republican shutdown in 2018 which reduced economic output by $11 billion in the following 2 quarters, including $3 billion that the United States economy never regained. That was a partial shutdown. Then the 2013 full Republican shutdown reduced GDP growth by $20 billion, according to Moody's Analytics. $20 billion. I think it is a little more than unfair to play both sides of the card here, because it doesn't apply.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans claim that they are trying to save money but continually weaken the United States Government's creditworthiness at a cost to the United States taxpayers.

In August, Fitch cited a decline in governance as a key reason for the United States' downgrade due to repeated battles over the past two decades that have led to government shutdowns or even taken the government to the brink of a debt default. Republicans need to get serious about governing and protect the United States' creditworthiness.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from the AP titled: ``The U.S. government's debt has been downgraded. Here's what to know.''

Mr. Speaker, there are consequences to these games that people on the right are playing, and the consequences are detrimental to our economy, which in turn are detrimental to the American people.

The gentleman from Oklahoma also talked about the Senate. I wish we were behaving more like the Senate than behaving like we are here in the House.

In the Senate, the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray, is actually working with the Republican Vice Chair, Senator Collins. There is a statement from Senator Murray saying: ``Vice Chair Collins and I have discussed how best to address these concerns, and we have agreed to make use of additional emergency appropriations--just as we do every year, and is fully allowed under the debt ceiling deal--to address in a bipartisan way some of the pressing challenges our Nation faces.

``In order to take these concerns regarding our defense and nondefense needs seriously, and to ensure we deliver the strongest bills possible with the broadest bipartisan support possible, Vice Chair Collins''--a Republican--``and I agreed to add $13.7 billion in additional emergency appropriations, including $8 billion for defense, and $5.7 billion for nondefense spread across four subcommittees, including the State/Foreign Ops bill we are considering today.''

This is in response to that.

The bottom line is what they are doing in the Senate is what we should be doing here. Even though Democrats control the Senate, they are sitting down with Republicans and they are having conversations. They are trying to come to deals. They are trying to not only get a short-term bill done to keep our government from shutting down, they are trying to figure out a long-term way forward.

The Senate has used the Fiscal Responsibility Act as a starting point for meaningful bipartisan dialogue and compromise. They reached an agreement to stay within the 1 percent of the Fiscal Responsibility Act and collaborated to report out 12 bills with near bipartisan unanimity.

Meanwhile, House Republicans haven't taken a single meaningful step to engage Democrats on necessary compromise. They failed to garner a single Democratic vote for their bills in committee and haven't been able to bring two of their bills to the full committee for consideration because the cuts were too deep.

Even moderates on your side don't want to vote for those things.

This is about the Senate following a bipartisan, collaborative process versus House Republicans turning their backs on that process and negotiating amongst themselves to make their bills more partisan.

There is a way to do this, but, unfortunately, you have a small group of the most extreme of the extreme calling all the shots. They are moving this place in the wrong direction. These are the people cheering for a government shutdown. These are the people who don't care how much they hurt the American people with across-the-board, mindless cuts in programs like Head Start and WIC and medical research and LIHEAP, cutting it by 65 percent.

I come from a State up north, Massachusetts. Tell my constituents, who depend on LIHEAP to heat their homes, the thinking behind gutting LIHEAP by 65 percent.

Talk about cruel. There are consequences to your actions. There are consequences to your words, the downgrading of our credit. If you succeed in getting some of these cuts, people are going to lose benefits that they not only rely on to do things like heat their homes, they need them to survive.

Enough of the nonsense. Let's come together and let's stop wasting time bringing another extreme CR to the House Rules Committee to bring on this floor that makes the crummy bill you brought the other night look like it is reasonable. Come on. We are running out of time.

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

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

I am not going to engage in the frivolous part of what this rule provides. I think Mr. Cole and I were having a serious debate about things that really matter here in terms of our economy and whether or not we can fund our government. I am not going to waste time talking about a nonbinding resolution that is nothing more than a press release.

Mr. Speaker, let's be honest with each other. We are only a few days away from a shutdown, and we are in chaos because the Republican Party is in the middle of a civil war. That is just a fact.

Speaker McCarthy cut a deal on spending levels back in May. That is what the Senate has acted on in a bipartisan way. The only people not holding up the bargain are House Republicans.

Speaker McCarthy is breaking his word, and I get it. I mean, he handed over the gavel to the most extreme in his party. He put the patients in charge of the hospital, and now he is getting blackmailed. Good luck to him getting out of the mess that he has made.

The American people deserve better, and they deserve to know that there is a difference here, a very clear difference. We may not always agree on every single issue, but Democrats come to this place every single day and we worry. We worry about making sure that people get better jobs. We worry because we want people to have better healthcare and we want people to have higher wages. We worry because we

want to make sure that people have clean air and water and great schools where we know our kids will make it home from school that day, they will be safe, and we want to make sure that everybody has access to affordable housing.

Republicans worry, too, but it seems that this Republican majority worries mostly about their own power. They worry about fighting with each other, trying to shut down the government, impeach the President, and remove their own Speaker.

The Republican majority in this House is a joke. They wasted weeks talking about gas stoves, weeks arguing about book bans, weeks telling kids what soccer team they can play on, and now we are on the eve of a shutdown and they are doing nothing to stop it. In fact, they are moving in the wrong direction.

We have Members on the other side of the aisle who go on network news and say ``shut it down,'' telling people that it is 100 percent certain that there will be a government shutdown. Who cares, they say.

Really?

Earlier, I talked about a seance. After looking at what is happening on the other side of the aisle, I think what this place needs is an exorcism. The Republican Party has gone to war with itself, and it doesn't matter which side wins because either way, they are not worried about anybody but themselves.

This is a serious consequential moment for this Congress. There are real impacts if there is a government shutdown. There are impacts to our credit rating. There are impacts to job creation. There are impacts to a whole bunch of things. Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, there are negative impacts for the people of this country. We have seen this movie before. It doesn't have a good ending.

In these last few days that we have, rather than fighting amongst yourselves, why don't you try something radical, and that is sitting down in a bipartisan way and coming to a deal that will get a majority of votes in this House. It requires the Speaker of the House to stand up to the extremists. It requires him to demonstrate some leadership. That is what is needed.

The Speaker of the House must lead. It is the obligation of everybody in this Chamber to, at a minimum, keep the lights on. This is the moment where we need some leadership, where the Speaker needs to stand up and tell the extremists no.

I said before, it is like the clowns are running the circus, and there is no ringmaster. Enough of this. This is a bad movie.

By the way, it is not just Democrats who are expressing concern about what is going on, and it is not just independents as well that are expressing concern, but I hear it from Members of their own Conference who have been on TV basically sounding the alarm bells saying, this is dysfunction, this is an unmitigated disaster. These are the words of Republican Members who are warning your leadership to get their act together.

We will see how things work out this weekend, but if the reports that we are reading are true, we are going to see a CR come to the Rules Committee that is even more extreme than the extreme CR that we dealt with and that was pulled the other day.

I mean, at the end of the day, I think people need to know that, when you cut some of these programs, when you cut LIHEAP, that means there are people who will not be able to heat their homes in the wintertime.

When you cut Head Start, that means there are countless kids who will not have an opportunity to succeed in the future.

When you cut programs like WIC, it means that there are pregnant mothers and newborn babies that will not have access to good nutrition.

When you cut medical research, you are not only putting farther off the day where we find a cure to some of these dreaded diseases that kill people, but you are also making it certain that the costs of healthcare will continue to rise.

None of this makes any sense. I know that there are adults on the other side of the aisle that want to do the right thing. Again, I plead with my colleagues. We will go through this, whatever we are going to do, a bill that is nonbinding that means nothing, an LNG bill that we have done twice before that is going nowhere fast, and then we will do this Defense appropriations bill, again, that represents the kitchen sink of MAGA culture wars.

We will go through all of that, but, while we are doing that, I hope that people are sitting down and getting serious to avoid a government shutdown, and then let's get together and do what the American people elected us to do.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge a strong ``no'' vote on this rule.

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

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

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 to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, last night, the Rules Committee met and produced a rule, H. Res. 1455, providing for the House's consideration of seven pieces of legislation.

First, the rule provides for H.R. 3724, the End Woke Higher Education Act, to be considered under a structured rule.

Second, the rule provides for H.R. 4790, the Prioritizing Economic Growth Over Woke Policies Act, under a closed rule.

Third, the rule provides for H.R. 5339, the Protecting Americans' Investments from Woke Policies Act, under a closed rule.

Fourth, the rule provides for H.R. 5179, the Anti-BDS Labeling Act, under a closed rule.

The rule provides for H.R. 7909, the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, and H.R. 5717, the No Bailouts for Sanctuary Cities Act.

Mr. Speaker, I support this rule and the underlying legislation, beginning with H.R. 3724, the End Woke Higher Education Act.

As a Member of the Education and the Workforce Committee, we have spent countless hours addressing the serious issues within higher education under the Biden administration, where activism is often prioritized and differing viewpoints are silenced.

These conversations have become increasingly necessary, as we have seen waves of anti-Semitic protests where students are supporting terrorist organizations, and these protests are sweeping the Nation.

Too many institutions of higher education have cowered to the mob of protesters, often compromising the safety and well-being of their students. Freedom of speech is under attack on our campuses nationwide, and it is our students who are paying the price.

This mindset weakens what has historically been the strength of America: free-flowing and open debate at our institutions of learning. We must not let campus activists, woke faculty, and partisan administrators turn post-secondary education into DEI indoctrination camps. Denying speech undermines the very fabric of the Nation and is against everything our Founders intended.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad this legislation includes my Students Bill of Rights Act of 2024, which aims to address the erosion of First Amendment rights faced by students, and provides protections for academic freedom and expression.

Our students should never feel afraid to express their point of view or fear retribution or negative consequences for their future.

This woke mind virus doesn't stop there, which brings me to H.R. 5339, the Protecting American Investments from Woke Policies Act. It protects the retirement savings of workers, retirees, and their families by rolling back woke ESG requirements that have nothing to do with the bottom line.

The bill ensures that financial institutions are focused on maximizing returns in retirement plans rather than advancing the Biden- Harris administration's radical agenda at the expense of American workers. Forcing often underperforming and relatively high-risk investments on our seniors is not what they are asking us to do in this Chamber.

In this spirit, I am glad the bill includes one of my pieces of legislation, the Retirement Proxy Protection Act. The bill ensures that fiduciaries prioritize economic interests of plan beneficiaries when voting on shareholder proposals.

Finally, the rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 4790, a comprehensive bill package targeting unelected bureaucrats.

Time and time again, this administration has prioritized, again, an ESG agenda and initiatives that are against the well-being of workers and American businesses.

Democrat-appointed bureaucrats are attempting to use regulation to create climate and social policy in our financial markets, ultimately raising costs and limiting growth.

This legislation aims to stop unnecessary political reporting requirements for companies, make Federal regulators more transparent, and reduce the SEC's power over shareholders.

I am proud that another one of my bills, the No Expensive, Stifling Governance Act, or No ESG Act, is included as part of this package.

I will also touch on a bill brought forward by the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaLota), my friend, H.R. 5717, the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of this bill. Despite the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 clearly stating that no restrictions can be placed on communication between local or State authorities and Federal immigration officials about someone's immigration status, many cities still choose not to comply.

We have known for years that sanctuary cities create incredible challenges for Federal law enforcement, and in doing so, public safety is endangered.

Let's take Aurora, Colorado, for example. They are experiencing unprecedented gang violence due to a neighboring sanctuary city.

We also know that the Biden-Harris administration has been a master class in how to not handle border security. This administration has totally failed, alongside the sanctuary cities, in enforcing our immigration laws because the crime that finds a home in a sanctuary city spreads to other jurisdictions.

If sanctuary cities choose to operate this way and endanger their own communities, neighboring communities, and, ultimately, the entire Nation, then they must be forced to balance their irresponsible choices with the loss of other Federal support. It is pretty simple: If you fail to comply with the law, you should not expect support.

Our constituents understand and also demand that their tax dollars not support sanctuary cities that actively undermine their public safety and our immigration law.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 136 to push back on EPA overregulation, H.R. 5179 to end anti-Israel boycotts, and H.R. 7909, the Violence Against Women Act, which would crack down on crime caused by the Biden-Harris administration's open-border policies.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to consideration of these important bills, and I urge the passage of this rule.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my colleague and the chair of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I note that what my colleague, the ranking member, does not note is that this House has passed under Republican leadership more than 300 bills out of the House of Representatives with 92 percent bipartisan support. Many of these bills go to the Democrat- controlled Senate where they die.

The ranking member also likes to criticize this majority when he knows full well just last Congress when he was chair, the Rules Committee was no bastion of an open process.

For the record, here are some statistics that might help paint a better picture and provide context for the cherry-picked numbers the Member rattled off.

It is true there have been more closed rules, but this majority has reported nearly twice the amount of bills in the last Congress. Considered as a percentage, this majority has reported fewer closed rules than when he had the gavel.

Even more, over a third of the closed rules were because no amendments

were offered, making the rule closed by definition.

Not considering those closed rules brings us still at roughly the same rate as a percentage of closed rules from the last Congress but with significantly more bills offered.

I also remind this body that the previous Congress saw the use and abuse of partisan en bloc amendment votes, which created omnibus-style amendments designed to defeat Republican, or tough amendments, and had the practical effect of stifling the Republican minority.

Even with this procedural atrocity, the ranking member still can't claim a higher ground on making minority amendments in order.

We also needed to keep up with the onslaught of regulations from the Biden-Harris administration that they have unleashed on the American people from unelected bureaucrats.

We have considered numerous disapproval resolutions, which traditionally are carried closed because of how they are written. The ranking member carried on this tradition when he had the gavel.

While the ranking member wants to talk about how we are stifling Democrat amendments, this majority has actually made more minority amendments in order as a percentage than the previous Congress when he was calling the shots.

While the ranking member shakes his finger at the majority for the way this Congress has gone, I point out that he understands the unique difficulties and the tough decisions the Rules Committee is tasked with in moving the majority's agenda.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from South Carolina (Mr. Norman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach).

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

The other side of the aisle won't even deport violent criminals. That is against the very safety of American citizens. In New York City, under Bill de Blasio, they passed a series of sanctuary city policies between 2014 and 2018 that prohibit the New York Police Department and correction and probation departments from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents except under very limited circumstances.

However, now, more than 100,000 migrants have passed through New York City since the spring of 2022, and 58,000 still remain in the city's care. Current Mayor Eric Adams and the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, have said: ``We don't have capacity.''

For years, ICE has warned that sanctuary cities create a public safety threat, and they are one of the biggest impediments to public safety efforts. However, under the Biden and Harris administration, the crisis at the southern border has only worsened the consequences of sanctuary policies and made enforcing current immigration laws even more difficult.

H.R. 5717, despite mischaracterizations from my friends on the other side of the aisle, creates an incentive for local jurisdictions to cooperate with Federal immigration officials by prohibiting Federal funds from being used to provide sanctuary for illegal aliens going to sanctuary jurisdictions. Under current law, it creates a perverse incentive for sanctuary cities to willingly flout the law.

H.R. 5717 holds sanctuary cities accountable for exacerbating the Biden-Harris border crisis and flouting Federal immigration law by prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars to fund housing, healthcare costs, and other benefits for illegal immigrants in such municipalities.

Taxpayers who are at risk due to the border crisis should not be funding local governments not interested in upholding the rule of law. No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities corrects these perverse incentives and ensures that taxpayers are not on the hook for this lawlessness.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire if the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is prepared to close.

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

Despite what my colleagues on the left have to say, the American people know that the Biden-Harris administration has been a relentless, woke assault on the American economy, the education system, and even Americans' retirement accounts.

The American people know the Biden-Harris administration has resulted in crippling inflation, a wide-open border, decreasing public safety, and increasing drug overdose deaths.

With the bills before us today, we continue to deliver for the American people. House Republicans are fighting at every turn to secure our borders, restore our economy, and protect free speech and free markets.

The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act and the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act are commonsense bills that would immediately make our communities safer, something the Biden-Harris administration has repeatedly failed to do. I would hope that our colleagues on both sides of the aisle would support these important bills.

I look forward to moving these bills out of the House this week, and I ask my colleagues to join me in voting ``yes'' on the previous question and ``yes'' on the rule.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from that other Commonwealth, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for yielding.

We are 9 days away--9 days and maybe call it 14 hours--from a government shutdown. It is completely unnecessary.

In this Chamber just 3 months ago, we had a vote. We voted to raise the debt ceiling, and we also voted to set the parameters and the figures for what next year's budget would be. That vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan. Eighty percent of House Democrats and almost two-thirds of House Republicans voted for it. There was a similarly large bipartisan vote in the Senate, and it was then signed into law by the President.

I thought at that point: Well, this is good news. Not only are we ensuring we didn't go over the cliff in terms of the debt ceiling, but it looks like we won't have another Republican-forced government shutdown.

Yet, here we are. Why? Because the Speaker of the House reneged on that deal even though two-thirds of their side of the aisle joined 80 percent of us in voting for it.

Honor the agreement that we had and that you voted for. This is completely unnecessary.

Yesterday in the Budget Committee, we marked up a completely partisan, one-sided budget resolution in an all-

day markup--$16 trillion worth of cuts, completely unrealistic. The Congressional Budget Office itself labeled it a cuts-only approach.

During that hearing, I pointed out that in previous government shutdowns, the Republican government shutdown in 2013 cost the economy upward of $6 billion. There were more than 120,000 fewer jobs as a result of that government shutdown. A subsequent Republican-forced government shutdown also cost the economy billions of dollars and also cost us jobs.

While it might be a game for some in Washington, D.C.--there are quotes from a number of Members on the other side of the aisle, by the way, saying they want a government shutdown. Don't take my word for it, just read the quotes of some of the Republican Members of the House cheering a government shutdown, saying that there will be no problem at all.

If only that were so. It costs us billions of dollars. Nothing good comes out of it.

Actually, I take that back. There is one thing that is good that comes out of it. Each and every time over the last 30 years that Republicans have forced a government shutdown, in the subsequent election, they are punished by the voters.

That was the case back in 1995. It was the beginning of Bill Clinton's comeback. He was losing at the polls at that moment to Bob Dole. Then the government shut down, the Gingrich-Dole shutdown, and Bill Clinton came back and went on to win reelection by over 8 points.

Similarly, in 2011, Barack Obama, at that moment, the polls showed him losing to Mitt Romney. Republican extremism forced the shutdown. Their extremism in playing around with the debt ceiling led to the first-ever downgrade in American history. Barack Obama ends up coming back and beats Mitt Romney a year later by 4 points.

So maybe there is one good thing that comes out of Republican extremism.

If there is anything clear over the last 9 months, it is that this side doesn't have a clue about governing. I keep hearing about the small majority. We know what it is like to have a small majority. We had the exact same five-seat majority last term. What did we do with it? We passed the most ambitious domestic policy legislation since 1965.

What has this side done? It takes them 15 votes just to elect their own guy Speaker. Now, they keep haranguing the poor guy, keep threatening him with the job day after day. Now, he is reneging on his own agreement that he brought here and voted for and that we passed in June.

By the way, we all know the way this is going to end, whether it is before a shutdown or afterward. The only thing that can pass the Senate, pass the House, and be signed into law by the President looks a lot like that legislation that passed here in June.

I hope that it doesn't take a government shutdown for the other side to finally get with it and learn these lessons.

The reality is ordinary Americans will suffer as a result of a government shutdown. It is completely unnecessary, and if it happens, it is solely the blame of the House Republican leadership.