Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Look, we all know what is happening here. If anybody believes that there is a true commitment to fully fund the promises that we have made to America's Native American tribes, you've got to be joking. Look at what is not funded in this legislation. It would be really simple to meet the promise that the gentleman spoke so eloquently about, and the way we would do that is to simply bring up a clean bill to reopen the entirety of government. Instead of picking and choosing which promises we will keep to America's Native American tribes, we would keep them all, instead of skipping the housing programs, the social service programs, and providing a talking point, but not meeting the obligation that this Congress has made to America's Native American tribes.

If any community in this country understands broken promises, it is the Native American tribes of this country in this bill, this legislation. This continues the trail of broken promises.

Mr. Speaker, I again ask unanimous consent that the House bring up the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the clean CR, and go to conference on a budget so that we can finally end this Republican shutdown.

I thank the ranking member, and thank you for your leadership on this issue.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution. Again, it is nothing but an attack on thousands of family farms in this country and in my district.

If it were the sense of Congress that it was right to end the successful sugar program, the House would have done that last June. Instead, we did the opposite. We defeated this same attack, clearly indicating that this program should be preserved.

The district that I represent is home to Michigan Sugar. And I hear these references--I heard them on the floor earlier, and I just saw it again--to Big Sugar. These are family farms that have banded together in cooperatives. You can call that Big Sugar if you want. It is a term I suppose that is intended to elicit certain thoughts about who these farmers are. That is a shame. These are family farmers who work hard every day and are forced to be in competition with multinational corporations.

We talk about the price of sugar. The price of sugar in a candy bar in 1985, there was 3 cents of sugar in that candy bar and it cost 35 cents. Today, that same candy bar is $1.39, and there is 3 cents of sugar in that candy bar.

Let's deal with the facts here. This is a struggle between companies that want to marginally increase their profit because not enough profits are going to these companies. They are among the highest, most profitable companies in the country, and they should be. That is good. But when is enough enough? Why is it that the family farmers are always the ones that are asked to give more, to potentially risk their livelihood, generations of livelihood?

This is wrong. It was wrong when we defeated it in June, and it is wrong again today.

Mr. Speaker, my constituents back home in Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City, Michigan, sent me here because they felt that I could represent them in a democratic body and protect their interests. Unfortunately, because of the willfulness and intransigence of some on the other side, we can't have a simple ``yes'' or ``no'' vote in this body to reopen government. Despite the fact that all Democrats and around 30 or so Republicans would be willing to take up the Senate- passed bill to reopen government, we have not been given the opportunity to do that.

What very few know--and I assume some on the other side may not even realize--is that the rule that was adopted here on October 1 takes away a longstanding privilege of Members of the House to call up a Senate bill in the event of a dispute between House and Senate versions of the same legislation. You have taken away that basic right that my voters and the Representatives of this body all should continue to possess in order to achieve or pursue your ideological goal of using a government shutdown to get what you can't get at the ballot box. This is wrong. It needs to end. We need to bring up the Senate-passed bill to reopen government today.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mr. Brad Luczak from my district. I ask the House of Representatives to join me in congratulating him on his nomination for the Saginaw Firefighter of the Year Award. This award speaks highly of his consistent dedication and commitment to excellence. Mr. Luczak has worked hard to earn this opportunity, and I am proud to have him protecting the people of Saginaw.

As a demonstrated leader, among not only his fellow firefighters, but also his city, Mr. Luczak exhibits what a true hero looks like. His drive and determination are truly inspiring, and he is a role model for the town. It is a true honor, Mr. Speaker, that Mr. Luczak represents Michigan and I thank him for his service to our country.

I applaud Mr. Luczak's efforts, and I look forward to following his progress in the future.

Mr. Speaker, this government shutdown has clearly demonstrated our democracy is not working the way it was designed. Unfortunately, this is largely due to the oversized influence and obscene amount of money in politics which continue to fuel our distorted political process, and it could get worse.

Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in the McCutcheon case, the second-coming of Citizens United. This case could open the door to even more money flooding our political process. Money and politics have paralyzed Washington and have paralyzed my Republican colleagues' will to compromise. They would be more apt to compromise if they were not absolutely petrified of the Koch brothers spending millions of dollars to unseat them.

We cannot afford to have a system of government fueled by money that rewards confrontation and condemns compromise. If we don't fix this underlying problem, money and politics, we will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, and the American people ultimately lose.

Mr. Speaker, every day that our Federal Government is closed, our economy gets weaker and necessary services that the American people depend upon are not available to them.

But what do we get? Rather than taking up the Senate-passed continuing resolution, we get a series of bills for PR value that are purportedly intended to reopen government, but nobody is fooled. We know that there's no real intent on the part of the other side to reopen government because you don't want to give up your leverage to try to defeat or repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act.

You lost in the House of Representatives. You lost in the Senate. You lost the campaign for the White House on this question. You lost in the Supreme Court. If this were baseball, you hit for the cycle and you lost all four.

We know that if these bills continue to come to us one or two a day, you'll have the Federal Government reopen sometime next spring. Let's do it this afternoon. When we come to this floor, you'll have a chance to vote on a clean CR, if you bring it up.

Let's reopen government today and stop this charade.

Mr. Speaker, I was sitting and listening to some of the previous speakers, and I heard more than one, but one in particular, make the point really forcefully that nobody wants this government shutdown, that universally we oppose, as Members of Congress, keeping our government closed. I just wish that were true.

I have been doing a lot of reading on this and looked back at some of the reports from months ago. There was a really interesting story in a magazine recently that described a strategy to not adopt the budget and to force an argument over the continuing resolution and to force the debate over the Affordable Care Act into the debate about the continuing resolution with the idea that if we don't, here in Congress, capitulate on a previously enacted law that the House and the Senate agreed to, that the President signed and the Supreme Court upheld, if we don't capitulate, that there will be a shutdown of the government. So I only wish it were true that not everybody in this body wanted to avoid this shutdown that is crippling our economy and hurting the American people.

There is something that we can do, however, to get out of this, and it would be simply to allow for a dose of democracy in the House of Representatives; because we know, and I have talked to many Members on both sides of the aisle, particularly Members on the other side, and it is not just the 17 that have already declared their willingness to buck the Tea Party leadership--and essentially the leader of the group in the House is the Senator from Texas. More than 17 are willing to vote for a clean bill to reopen government so that we can get back to the business of legislating. I think it is a big number. I suspect it might even be a majority of the other side. The Senate would approve it. It already has. The President said he would sign it, and a majority of this House, probably a majority of both parties, would approve a clean resolution to reopen government so that we can get on with the fights on things that we don't agree on. That's the way this democracy was designed.

I'm new here. I've only been here 9 months, but I've been following government, been a part of it for a long, long time. I'm a citizen who understands how our democracy is supposed to work; and I always believed that if a majority of both bodies agree on a particular position and the President agrees, that we can put a law through, sign it, and get on with the business.

The other side talks a lot about negotiating, having a conference committee. It is so interesting to me that back in April after both bodies, the House and the Senate, had adopted budget resolutions, that it was the Republican leadership that not only failed to, but refused to negotiate a budget resolution that could have avoided this whole thing in the first place. I had to wonder then--I was scratching my head--Why?

The charade of the last week or so has made it clear to me why: This was the intent all along, to shut down government and use that--the kindest term I can use, I suppose, is ``leverage''; I've heard others use other terms--but to use that leverage to try to extract from the government that which the other side couldn't win legislatively, couldn't win at the ballot box, but will use every tool, including the closing of the Federal Government and now the threat to default on our Federal obligations, and wreck the economy in doing so.

The President agrees, the Senate agrees, a majority of the House agrees we should continue to operate government. We should adopt the continuing resolution at the number that the Republican leadership has supported all along and get back to providing the services that our country needs and provide stability back into our economy.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I'm new to Congress, and I knew when I was elected last year that I was coming to a place where I would be in the minority and where it was a highly partisan environment.

I was elected to replace a gentleman--my uncle--who served in this body for 36 years. He sat alongside Mr. Dingell, whom we heard from earlier. I did not believe, though, that I was elected to a body where the majority would impose its will and use the rules to prevent a vote on the floor of the House for action that would open government--that the President supports, that the Senate has already adopted, and that Democrats and Republicans in this body have both acknowledged would pass if it were brought to a vote here on the floor of the House.

We know how we can get D.C. and the whole rest of the government open again. It's simply to do what the will of this body would have us do if we were only allowed a vote. And that is to bring the Senate CR to the floor of the House. We will pass it; we will get government open again; and then we can go to conference on the rest of the budget.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House bring up the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the clean CR that would end this Republican shutdown.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, you know, I've heard a number of the Members on the other side make reference to the notion that we ought to have a conference, and I have heard some eloquent commentary referencing the point that we ought to talk to one another.

Well, I know it's been said before, but I'm a new Member; and I heard a bit of a lecture, that maybe some of the new Members don't know what a conference committee is. Well, we know. We understand. We know how this works, so much so that many of us joined the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), on our side, on April 23 of this year asking that a conference committee be appointed to reconcile the differences in the budgets passed by the House and by the Senate. I didn't hear any of those speeches then about the value of talking to one another. Not until 15 minutes before the government of the United States was to be shut down did suddenly something that a freshman has known for a long time, did it occur to folks on the other side that it might be time to have a conversation. It's too little. It's too late. Bring the Senate- passed CR here, and we will adopt it.

Mr. Speaker, like a number of the previous speakers, I'm a freshman and I'm really frustrated.

I'm frustrated because we haven't done our job, but I'm mostly frustrated because I continually hear the talking point spouted that the President will not negotiate, and that's the reason we're in the position we're in. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The President won't negotiate on the full faith and credit of the United States, just like we can't negotiate on our oath of office and you can't negotiate on the law of gravity. Some things can't be negotiated.

What's frustrating to me is that the failure to negotiate falls clearly on the shoulders of the Republicans. The Senate and the House passed budgets. What the leadership on the Republican side failed to do is to appoint conferees to do what? To negotiate a budget, one that we might not like, the Senate might not like, but that we come together on and adopt a budget that the American people can support.

This is a failure to negotiate, that's right. But it's a failure to do what every fourth-grade civics student knows: how a bill becomes a law, negotiate the differences.

Mr. Speaker, once again, crucial deadlines loom, and here we are circling the drain, days away from another Republican- manufactured government shutdown due to the irresponsible lack of governing. Instead of forging--or even attempting to forge--a bipartisan compromise, we have another manufactured crisis, putting America on another roller-coaster ride.

Unfortunately, we have been here before, with the other party playing politics and pandering to their Tea Party base rather than doing what we were sent here to do, and that is to govern. It's enough. The American public is fed up with this.

It's time to drop the foolishness and stop pursuing--through threatening means that threaten the economy--what you can't achieve at the ballot box or through legislation.

The implications of this shutdown are real: it will hurt the American economy, and it threatens direct benefits that our veterans and people with disabilities receive. There's just too much at stake.

Republicans should drop this charade and do the job that we were elected to do, and that is govern, pass a budget, and protect the rights of the American people.

Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, Mr. Grijalva, for his leadership and for yielding the time.

I rise in strong opposition to this bill. I have consulted with many Native American tribes, including the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, which I represent. This bill simply does not rise to the standard that allows me to support it. I have talked to the tribes. Their concern is that this bill does not adequately support the protection of sacred lands, nor does it adequately confer with Native Americans on these critical issues.

The gentleman mentioned that the two cosponsors of this legislation have set aside their differences. I have great respect for both Members that offer this legislation. It is commendable that they have set aside their differences.

Unfortunately, what this bill does is also set aside the objections of the Native American tribes of this Nation--of this country--who object to the bill.

It's bad for a couple of reasons:

First, it waives NEPA protections that require mining companies to publicly disclose the environmental impacts they will create, including on our water resources.

Second, basically this bill provides a multibillion dollar giveaway to a foreign mining conglomerate that is engaged in mining uranium in Iran.

Third, this bill would potentially destroy sacred and religious lands.

I know something firsthand about the importance of preserving sacred tribal sites. When I was the president of the Genesee County Land Bank back home in Flint, Michigan, we discovered sacred ancestral remains on a worksite. Instead of simply continuing on the project, as many would have had us do, we did the right thing. We stopped the development, worked with local and tribal officials, identified and protected the sacred remains and returned the land to the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe.

The Federal Government has a legal and trust responsibility to Indian tribes and to protect and preserve sacred tribal lands, and we should take that role very seriously.

I suggest and implore my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank other Members of this body. In less than a week, 72 Members, Members representing the House and the Senate, have joined me in the campaign to free Amir Hekmati from prison in Iran, joined the Free Amir Campaign.

This has been a strong bipartisan effort. We know there's not a lot that's happening in this House right now that happens on a bipartisan basis, but this is something that Members of the House on both sides of the aisle, and all Americans, can join together to do, take a tangible step to help free my constituent who is being held in an Iranian prison on false charges.

Every day, Americans are speaking up because it's something that they can actually do to make a difference through the social media, through Twitter. Thousands of tweets calling on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to release Amir Hekmati have gone out while President Rouhani is in New York at the U.N. General Assembly; and we know that the Iranian Government monitors social media, participates in social media, so we know that the message is getting through to them. It's a powerful tool, and one that all Americans can engage in to help with this important cause.

I was sent here to fight for my constituents, to work on their behalf, and that includes Amir Hekmati.

Amir is a former U.S. Marine who served his country well, and went to visit his family in Iran. He is of Iranian descent, born and raised here in the U.S., a constituent of mine in Flint, Michigan. He went to visit his family and was arrested, tried and convicted on false charges as a result.

So what we're now seeking to do is to encourage the Iranian Government, as it makes overtures to the global community, to take a tangible step in coming toward the international community by doing what's right and releasing Amir.

We've had tangible support here from Congress; 112 of my colleagues signed a letter to Secretary Kerry asking him to elevate this case, and he's responded and spoke out, calling upon the Iranian Government to release my constituent, Amir Hekmati.

Ambassador Samantha Power, our representative to the United Nations, tweeted shortly after I sent her a letter, sent out a tweet of her own calling on the Iranian Government to release Amir and the other Americans being unjustly held.

It's time for Iran to do more than just talk. If Iran and President Rouhani is looking for a tangible demonstration that he is serious about re-engaging the global community, re-emerging as a nation among nations, then he can do what's right and release my constituent.

The other day he said he wanted to bring peace and friendship from the Iranian people to the Americans. The American people have responded by asking for that important critical concrete step in the name of friendship, in the name of peace, and that is to release Amir.

It would demonstrate to all Americans and to the global community that this is not just a matter of words, but it's a matter of action. And the only way, I think, that we, as a global society and, certainly, as the American Government, can accept Iran's request to rejoin the international community is if it does something more than just say they want to join, but actually takes an important step.

I will continue this fight. We will not stop. The family of Amir Hekmati will not stop. Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate will not stop. The American Government will not stop until Amir is free.

I take this as my personal challenge, as a personal responsibility as the Member of Congress representing the family. But I think we all, as Americans, can join this fight to free Amir Hekmati and to bring him home to his family.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's all I ask is that Members of the House and the public join this cause and help free Amir.