Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to share the frustrations of many of my constituents who are suffering from severe noise pollution caused by the FAA's NextGen program which has altered flight paths to Reagan National Airport. Montgomery County, Maryland, residents who live as much as 20 miles away from the airport have experienced a 300 to 500 percent increase in air traffic over their homes. These flight path changes have significantly disrupted life below with relentless noise pollution.

As 400 flights per day cross over Bethesda at low altitudes, many of my constituents are woken up in the middle of the night, others are interrupted and distracted at work by the onslaught of noise, and there are children complaining that they cannot hear their teachers speak over the noise occasionally caused by commercial jets flying over their schools.

After more than 3 years of incessant disturbance of their peace and quiet, my constituents were stunned last month when the FAA announced that it would implement yet another change to flight paths at Reagan National Airport that would lead to even more air traffic over our communities. The FAA casually announced the change slated for an August 2019 implementation date at a meeting with the Community Noise Working Group that works with FAA to address the problem of noise pollution at Reagan National Airport. Given the substantial consequences of this change and the complete lack of public input in its development, I urge the FAA to delay the implementation date and to engage seriously with our Community Noise Working Group, which is eager to evaluate the proposed changes and work towards alternative proposals or strategies to avert or at least mitigate the impact.

It is my hope, Mr. Chairman, that with the $17.7 billion that this bill appropriates to the FAA, the agency will take serious steps toward dramatically reducing the noise pollution in residential areas in my district, in Montgomery, and throughout the Nation.

Thank you, Chairman Price, for your indulgence.

Madam Chairwoman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairwoman, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 3055, relating to a problem taking place in my district that may be reflective of what is happening in many other parts of the country.

A fire station on a military installation recently experienced a devastating fire itself, but now cannot get the funds it needs to construct a new firehouse.

Madam Chairwoman, the United States spends billions of dollars every year on military projects, but we need the funds to fix and maintain the basic buildings and infrastructure that have fallen into disrepair on military installations across the country.

This situation was brought to my attention by constituents who work at the Naval District of Washington Fire and Emergency Services station located at the Naval Support Activity Bethesda installation in Maryland. NSA Bethesda provides base support

for 40 tenant commands, including Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which the Members of this body know well.

Earlier this year, a fire broke out at NSA Bethesda's station, which exacerbated already hazardous conditions at the firehouse. It began in the kitchen, but because the fire alarm never went off, the flames spread into other rooms, causing extensive damage and rendering the firehouse basically unfit for occupancy. Fortunately, no one was injured because no one was there, but had the fire occurred overnight while everyone was asleep, it would have been a nightmare.

For several years prior to the fire, concerns about the safety of the firehouse, which was built in 1942, were raised by the people who live and work there. The complaints ranged from dangerous mold and asbestos, to roof leaks, electrical problems, and structural instability.

Temporary trailers erected next to the firehouse are also at a breaking point with air-conditioning units that only work intermittently, chronic mold, and leaking septic pipes. Yet, the complaints of the firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs were minimized or ignored. The firefighters have been told repeatedly that there is simply no money available to renovate or to build a new fire station.

In response to the hazardous conditions caused by the fire, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command simply put up some drywall and told the firefighters that the building was now ready to reoccupy.

The firefighters work 48-hour shifts and sometimes longer. They are worried about the carcinogens they are being exposed to, not just when they enter burning buildings, but when they breathe the air inside their own firehouse. This is happening at the fire station that responds to emergencies on an installation that is home to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the most prominent military hospital in America.

The men and women working there serve our military and our Nation's wounded warriors. Many of the firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics are themselves former soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coastguardsmen. One of my constituents said: ``I served 4 years in the Army and was deployed overseas. The conditions in the firehouse are, by far, the worst conditions I have seen or lived in.'' Another told me that he lived in better conditions when he was serving in Afghanistan.

This is shocking and unacceptable. The men and women working at the fire station deserve better. They need funding to build a new, safe, clean, fire station. In a Defense budget of hundreds of billions of dollars, we should be able to have money for essential projects like this one.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), my colleague who has been a real leader on this issue and is the chairwoman of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

Madam Chair, I look forward to working with the gentlewoman to secure funding for projects like the one in my district.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 2740 to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland. It would provide a modest $5 million increase to NIH's building and facilities account.

Mr. Chair, this amendment would increase funding for the NIH, which is proudly housed in the Eighth Congressional District of Maryland, and it would constitute a $5 million increase to the NIH building and facilities account to begin to address an estimated $2 billion backlog in maintenance and repairs.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the distinguished chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chair, the NIH, of course, is a national treasure, which sets the standard for cutting-edge biomedical research in our country. Its breakthroughs have saved the lives of countless Americans and remains a source of hope for millions more across the country.

While the NIH does, indeed, under this bill, receive the necessary funding increase for scientific research and medical treatments, NIH's buildings, the places where the scientists conduct their research and where medical professionals provide patients with their treatments, have fallen into alarming and embarrassing disrepair and decay.

There have been significant issues with flooding, broken fire sprinklers, deteriorating plumbing systems, and massive water pipe ruptures. A steam pipe leak flooded a basement where expensive equipment is stored.

Last year, a clinic was evacuated when antifreeze began leaking from the ceiling. A corroded pipe had caused a flood of glycol--that is antifreeze--in the mechanical room, which can be seen in chart one. And in chart two, this is the flood that resulted from the gushing from the ceiling into the clinic below. This presented a very dangerous situation.

So when I say that the NIH desperately needs funding for maintenance and repairs, we are not talking about minor aesthetic quibbles; we are talking about very serious structural renovations that are needed. $5 million is just a drop in the bucket in terms of what NIH actually needs, but we have to start somewhere.

Having spoken with Ms. DeLauro, I will actually withdraw the amendment. I understand that we are able to receive consideration from the subcommittee. I want to thank her very much for her willingness to work with us.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time, and I withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 431 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will not accept a bipartisan congressional rejection of

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

to declare a national emergency and then reprogram money from

other lawfully appropriated purposes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 6 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, June 11, 2019, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 3 minutes a.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, June 10, 2019, at 2 p.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Cathy Hughes, who was recently inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, making her the first African American woman to receive that honor. Cathy's world-famous business, Radio One (now Urban One), is headquartered in my district, in Silver Spring, Maryland, and I am very proud of her and the more than 1,000 people employed there by Urban One.

Cathy began her radio career at KOWH-AM in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. In 1971, she became a lecturer at the newly established School of Communications at Howard University, and served as general sales manager at WHUR, Howard University Radio.

She also became the first female Vice President and General Manager of a station in the Nation's Capital and pioneered the format known as the ``Quiet Storm,'' which aired on more than 480 stations nationwide. In 1980, Cathy purchased her flagship station WOL-AM, in Washington, D.C., and pioneered yet another innovative format--``24-Hour Talk from a Black Perspective.'' With the theme, ``Information is Power,'' she served as the station's morning show host for 11 years.

In 1999, Cathy became the first African-American woman to chair a publicly-held corporation. Along with her son and business partner, she grew what was then Radio One into a multi-media company that became an urban radio market leader with more than 60 stations across the country. It became the first African-American company in radio history to dominate several major markets simultaneously, and Cathy became the first woman to own a radio station that was ranked number one in a major market.

I commend Cathy Hughes for her pioneering contributions over the course of her career and congratulate her on her induction into the National Association of Broadcasters' Broadcasting Hall of Fame.

Mr. Speaker, I want to strike a bipartisan note and invoke a Republican President who made America truly great, Abraham Lincoln, who served in this body and spoke of government of the people, by the people, and for the people--all the people.

In 1964, our predecessors in the House stood here and voted 333-85 to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The vast majority of Democrats and the vast majority of Republicans voted for it, and we changed America by bringing down the walls of racial and ethnic discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and education.

Our predecessors rejected the familiar hysterical arguments that equal rights for African Americans in restaurants and hotels and at lunch counters meant discrimination against the religious rights of the owners of the restaurants and the motels and lunch counters, which is precisely the argument that was made back in that day.

Today, we legislate equal rights under the exact same act for millions of Americans in the LGBT community. This is a triumphant and glorious moment for the House of Representatives and for the United States of America.

But our friends who now occupy the seats of Lincoln's party tell us that children will be able to get surgery without their parents' consent. This is false, and this is propaganda.

Every State in the Union requires parental consent before their minor children get surgery, and nothing in this act will affect any of the States' laws in any way with respect to parental consent.

Let's honor Abraham Lincoln. Let's honor the best traditions of the United States of America. Let's bring down the walls of discrimination against all Americans. Let's pass the Equality Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Rabbi Bruce Lustig, who just led us in this wonderful opening prayer.

Rabbi Lustig is senior rabbi of the Washington Hebrew Congregation, which is Washington, D.C.'s largest and oldest synagogue and where many of my constituents worship.

The son of a refugee from Nazi Germany, his mother, Hedy Lustig, Rabbi Lustig grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was often the only Jewish child at school. The strong cultural identity instilled by his mother, and the emphasis his family placed on engaging with his Christian friends and classmates, laid the foundation for his lifelong commitment to interfaith work, including his efforts to open dialogue and strengthen relationships among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and people of all faiths.

Ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Lustig holds a doctorate of divinity and a master's degree in Hebrew letters. He earned his bachelor's with honors from the University of Tennessee.

In delivering today's opening prayer in the House, Rabbi Lustig continues a venerable and important tradition. Since the Washington Hebrew Congregation was created in 1862, every single one of its senior rabbis has delivered an opening prayer before the U.S. Congress. Rabbi Lustig now joins that esteemed group.

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to welcome Rabbi Lustig to the House today, and I would like to extend my thanks for his excellent leadership in our community and for offering today's prayer.

Madam Speaker, while the nation has been focused on Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election and questions of presidential obstruction of justice, President Donald Trump's violation of fundamental principles and norms of American democracy have been far more comprehensive. In the last three months, more than 400 attorneys--including former federal and state judges, United States Attorneys, managing partners of large law firms, law deans and other distinguished lawyers from around the country--have stepped forward in a broad and unprecedented effort to defend American democracy and the rule of law against official lawlessness.

The lawyers have signed and published an ``Open Letter to The President and Congress'' identifying five fundamental norms and principles of our democracy which they believe the President has violated. These violations involve the President's unjustified attacks on the mainstream media, courts, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, his repeated lying to the public, and failure to respect civil discourse and peoples from all backgrounds. The Letter's Appendix cites examples of violations of each principle.

The Letter emphasizes that it is ``NOT about disagreements over Republican or Democratic policies, liberal or conservative ideology, or political party advantage. The values and principles threatened here are much deeper, and are much more important, than politics, policy differences and any politician's self-interest. They're the bedrock of our American, constitutional, democratic form of government for all times.''

The Letter notes that: ``[u]nless challenged and checked, the pattern of disregard weakens the norms that underpin American self-government and invites unfettered Executive power--transforming the United States from a democracy to an autocracy. As members of the legal profession, pledged to support the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers, we must not allow this to happen.'' I am pleased to endorse this Letter and Appendix by Lawyers Defending American Democracy, www.lawyersdefendingdemocracy.org, and include them in the Record.

We are fortunate that, at a time of rising authoritarianism around the world, lawyers in the United States are standing strong for the rule of law and the Constitution.

Open Letter of Lawyers Defending American Democracy

We live at a time when America's fundamental values are

under attack. As American lawyers, we're deeply concerned

about protecting the democratic institutions and principles

that have enabled America to be the world's preeminent beacon

of freedom and opportunity.

As lawyers, we have the responsibility to defend the

underlying constitutional values and norms of political

behavior on which our democracy depends. These core values

and principles include: the rule of law; institutional checks

and balances; separation of powers; press freedom;

truthfulness to the public; and the integrity of our system

of justice.

Accordingly, we, as lawyers, cannot ignore or remain silent

about President Donald Trump's disregard of these core values

and principles. We must speak out.

Yet, we recognize that elections have consequences. This

effort to energize and mobilize our legal profession is

emphatically NOT about disagreements over Republican or

Democratic policies, liberal or conservative ideology, or

political party advantage. The values and principles

threatened here go much deeper, and are much more important

than politics, policy differences and any politician's self-

interest. They're the bedrock of

our American, constitutional, democratic form of government.

Specifically, we call on the President to respect and honor

the following fundamental principles and norms of American

democracy:

Independence, integrity and the critical role of mainstream

media: An independent and watchful mainstream media is, and

always has been, an essential component of American

democracy.

Independence, integrity, competence and nonpartisanship of

the judiciary: The independence, integrity, competence and

nonpartisanship of our judiciary is, and from the founding of

our Nation has been, a central pillar of our democratic

system.

Truthfulness of public officials: Our democracy is built on

trust and telling the people the truth about public matters;

the maintenance of that trust and Americans' ability to make

informed and rational public decisions require our leaders to

provide honest, factual information to us all.

Independence, integrity, competence and nonpartisanship of

federal criminal justice and intelligence agencies, including

Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI: Nonpartisan

independence, integrity and competence are critical to the

fairness of our federal criminal justice system and

intelligence agencies.

Civil discourse and fair treatment, including the respect

for rights and the dignity of all individuals, regardless of

race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender,

disability or sexual orientation: Civil discourse and fair

treatment, including respect for the rights and dignity of

all individuals, is an essential ingredient of American

democracy.

The President's attacks on these core American democratic

principles undermine the foundations of our Constitution and

threaten the rule of law. Unless challenged and checked, this

pattern of disregard weakens the norms that underpin American

self-government and invites unfettered Executive power--

transforming the United States from a democracy to an

autocracy. As members of the legal profession, pledged to

support the rule of law and the constitutional separation of

powers, we must not allow this to happen.

Fortunately, a group of prominent conservative lawyers has

recently spoken out on many of these same issues through a

new organization, ``Checks and Balances.'' Now, other members

of the bar must no longer remain silent.

We call on the leaders of America's bar associations, law

schools, law firms and fellow lawyers nationwide to speak

out, on a nonpartisan basis, against these attacks on the

core of our democratic constitutional form of government. As

lawyers, we have a responsibility to uphold ``the rule of

law'' and prevent ``the law of rulers.'' Wherever you live

and work--in cities, towns, rural areas, suburbs--American

democracy needs to hear your voice.

Appendix

We list below the five fundamental principles and values of

American democracy highlighted in our Open Letter to the

President. Under each principle, we describe patterns or

examples of behavior by the President that we believe

constitute serious violations of these principles. The

examples are not intended to be comprehensive and may be

added to in the future.

Principle: Independence, integrity and the critical role of

mainstream media.

Pattern of Violations: Nevertheless, the President has

labeled the mainstream news media that have earned our trust

through decades of relentless, factual reporting as the

``enemy of the American people!'' and has repeatedly

criticized reporting he dislikes as ``Fake News.''

Principle: Independence, integrity, competence and

nonpartisanship of judiciary.

Pattern of Violations: Nevertheless, the President has

criticized ``our Court System'' as ``broken and unfair'' and

has pilloried the judges and decisions of an entire Federal

Circuit as ``[a] terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace.''

He has publicly labeled a federal judge with whose decision

he disagreed a ``so-called judge''. And he sought to

undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of another

federal judge--who had ruled that the President's immigration

policy violated express statutory language--by calling him

``an Obama judge.''

Principle: Civil discourse and fair treatment, including

respect for rights and dignity of all individuals, regardless

of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender,

disability or sexual orientation.

Examples of Violations: Nevertheless, the President has

said that there were ``some very fine people on both sides''

of the murderous Charlottesville white nationalists'

demonstrations. He's approved the removal of thousands of

children from their immigrant parents, for extended time

periods, and has publicly insulted several respected African-

American female journalists.

Principle: Independence, integrity, competence and

nonpartisanship of federal criminal justice and intelligence

agencies, including Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI.

Examples of Violations: Nevertheless, the President has

attacked the DOJ for indicting Republican Congressmen for

serious financial crimes because the indictments would harm

the chances for reelecting Republicans. He has attacked and

removed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for lack of

personal loyalty, after having previously complained that:

``I don't have an Attorney General.''

He has accused the special counsel's deliberate,

professional, lawful investigation of Russian interference

with the 2016 election as the ``rigged Mueller Witch Hunt!''

And, he has rejected the U.S. intelligence community's

consensus finding of Russian interference in that election,

because Vladimir Putin, the autocratic Russian President,

told the President that there was no interference.

Principle: Truthfulness of public officials.

Examples of Violations: [. . .] The Washington Post has

documented more than 7,500 ``false or misleading claims'' by

the President

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the important work of the National 4-H Council, our country's largest youth development organization, as well as Clyde Van Dyke, the national winner of the 2019 4-H Youth in Action Award. Clyde, who also won the 4-H Youth in Action STEM Pillar Award, was honored at the National 4-H Council's Legacy Awards in Washington, D.C., and is being awarded $10,000 in scholarships for higher education.

The 4-H Youth in Action Award recognizes Clyde for his resilience and commitment to using technology to spark community change. Clyde faced many challenges during his childhood, including the loss of his mother at a young age. He was further discouraged in elementary school when he was told that most kids with his background ``wouldn't succeed.'' These feelings of defeat led him to put forth little effort in school. Everything changed for Clyde when a friend invited him to a 4-H technology club meeting. Not only did the 4-H program provide Clyde with access and exposure to technology, it also helped him develop important life skills that altered his perspective and boosted his drive to succeed.

4-H empowers nearly 6 million young people like Clyde across the United States through experiences that develop critical life and career skills. Through a network of 110 public universities and more than 3,000 local extension offices, 4-H serves every county and parish in the United States. Globally, 4-H collaborates with independent programs to empower approximately 1 million young people in 50 countries. Young people who take part in the research-backed 4-H experience are four times more likely as their peers to contribute to their communities; twice as likely to make healthier life choices; twice as likely to be civically active; and twice as likely to participate in STEM programs.

I commend 4-H for its ongoing work to educate and engage our young people and I salute Clyde Van Dyke for his exemplary perseverance, civic engagement, and ingenuity.

Mr. Speaker, at Sunday school, Jewish kids learn the imperishable words of Hillel, who said: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself only, then who am I? And if not now, when?

Today, we must all stand strongly and proudly for ourselves and our communities, but we must also stand in strong solidarity with other people and their communities. We must act now because in America and in nations all over the world, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and other forms of racism and intolerance are sharply on the rise.

These old and lethal poisons are not only a threat to individual Jews and Muslims and African Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans and Native Americans walking down the street, and to our children playing at school, they are the common enemy of liberal democracy, which depends upon tolerance and pluralism to survive.

As the world's oldest liberal democracy and a thriving multiracial and multicultural society, America must reject the myths and stereotypes and libels and tropes that make up these ancient hatreds.

Anti-Semitism and racism are the gateway to destruction for everything that we believe in as a society. They are a threat to the values of our constitutional creed: pluralism and tolerance, religious freedom and freedom of association, equal protection for all citizens.

Let us stand up today for our most hard-won American ideals, and let us vote for this resolution condemning racism and anti-Muslim bigotry and other forms of racism and intolerance.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time.

Our friends across the aisle are nothing if not courageous. They have got the brazen temerity to raise the question of process after running the most closed Congress in the history of the United States of America; the most closed House of Representatives that anyone has ever seen.

Let's compare their H.R. 1 when they got started with our H.R. 1. Well, their's was filed, marked up, and passed in 2 weeks with no hearings, no amendments made in order, and no expert testimony at all.

Our H.R. 1 was filed on the first day of the new Congress for all of the public to read. There have been hearings in five different committees with over 15 hours of expert testimony, culminating in a full committee markup in House Administration. Sixty days later, we are now on the floor for consideration in an open and transparent way.

You would think they would have the decency not to raise the question of process after running the House of Representatives like King Kong over the last 2 years. But the people who ran it like King Kong now want to turn it into a Quaker meeting house somehow. They should be thanking us for the openness of our proceedings.

Their H.R. 1 blew a $1.5 trillion hole in the deficit, a staggering and unprecedented assault on the fiscal integrity of the United States of America, to shower tax cuts on the wealthy and well-connected.

Our H.R. 1 is an effort to reclaim our democracy from the wealthy and well-connected people who were the beneficiaries of their H.R. 1 by creating a 21st century campaign finance system that responds to the people.

On the substance of the matter, it is amazing to me that my colleagues raise the question of the swamp. They got elected 2.5 years ago campaigning against the swamp. It was a great slogan they borrowed from Nancy Pelosi. They moved to Washington. They moved into the swamp. They built a hotel on it, and they have turned the Government of the United States into a money-making operation for the President, and the President's family, and the President's friends and business associates.

Now, what are we doing in H.R. 1? We are trying to reclaim American democracy. This legislation is anti-gerrymandering legislation. This legislation says that every State in the Union will have to have an independent redistricting commission. No politicians involved.

They want the politicians to be involved. Amazingly, they embrace the title of being the gerrymander party. They want to keep gerrymandering because that is how they maintain their stranglehold on political power.

The whole purpose of H.R. 1 is to liberate us from the gerrymandering of our elections. That is why we start with independent redistricting commissions. We move to publicly financed elections, because either the big, wealthy, special interests are going to own the elections, or else the people are going to own them through a small, donor-leveraged system. And that is what we are doing. We have got ethics reform in this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage, everyone to actually read the terms of this landmark reform legislation, which insists upon ethics reform at the Supreme Court, ethics reform in the executive branch, empowering the Office of Government Ethics to have real subpoena power, and to actually be able to ferret out the corruption which is engulfing the Trump administration today, and to prevent corruption in the future.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise to offer this amendment to H.R. 1.

For decades, the law prevented business corporations from engaging in campaign spending. But the Supreme Court destroyed that prohibition with its watershed decision in 2010, in the Citizens United case, which, for the first time, defined for-profit business corporations as political membership associations and, thereby, unleashed billions of dollars in corporate treasury money into the political system.

Since then, corporations have taken advantage of this newfound constitutional identity and political freedom by investing hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions, in campaign expenditures and the torrent of ``dark money'' now coursing through the political system.

But who are these corporations speaking for?

Well, according to the court, they are speaking for the shareholders. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy took the position that corporate political campaigning is on behalf of the shareholders, an association of individuals who have taken on the corporate form.

But, in reality, we know that CEOs engage in political spending without the knowledge, much less the consent of the shareholders whose First Amendment rights are allegedly being exercised.

Anyone who has a retirement fund with money invested in corporate equities will know that they have never been asked whether they want a portion of their retirement money invested in Republican or Democratic or other campaigns. The CEOs just do it without their participation.

What can be done to stop shareholders' money from being spent on campaigns without their knowledge or consent?

Most Americans want a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United and restore the definition of corporations as economic entities barred from politics. But there is something that we can do right now, short of that, simply by enforcing Citizens United on its own terms. Justice Kennedy said the main check against abuse of this new right would be exercised by the ``shareholders through the procedures of corporate democracy.''

Justice Kennedy assumed a world of comprehensive and immediate disclosure. He wrote: ``Shareholder objections raised through the procedures of corporate democracy can be more effective today because modern technology makes disclosures rapid and informative. With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable . . . citizens can see whether elected officials are in the pocket of so-called moneyed interests.''

But the current system provides nothing like that kind of transparency and accountability. This amendment, the Shareholders United Act of 2019, will begin to change the secrecy, darkness, and oligarchical implications of the current system.

It would require publicly-traded corporations to get shareholder buy- in on the front end before their money is channeled into political campaigns. Companies would have to develop a process to assess shareholder preferences for political spending, and make any such spending within a year of assessing the majority's preferences.

Moreover, the amendment recognizes that some shareholders are institutional investors, like pension funds, States, and cities, mutual funds, universities or charities, which are categorically forbidden from expressing partisan political preferences.

If this type of investor holds a majority of corporate shares, the corporation would not be able to make expenditures from the general treasury because the CEO, at that point, would paradoxically be speaking for institutional shareholders that may not themselves speak in politics.

Citizens are begging for this kind of commonsense regulation and promotion of corporate democracy. People invest in the stock market to save for retirement, or to send their kids to college, not to support their favorite political candidates, much less their most disfavored ones.

I know that I would be mad as hell to learn that my retirement money was being spent, being given away to Donald Trump and the RNC; just as I assume my GOP friends don't want their pension dollars going to the DNC or to help Elizabeth Warren's Presidential campaign.

People who invest in the stock market should not be used as the pawns for the political designs of CEOs. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this commonsense amendment called for by Justice Kennedy's opinion in Citizens United.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for those thoughtful comments. The ranking member of the House Administration Committee contends that we talked about this in the House Administration Committee which, indeed, we did, and it was precisely that discussion which led to the formation of the amendment.

I am afraid there he is just protesting against the character of the legislative process. We have a discussion; we learn things; we develop new amendments. And for a moment there it sounded like he wanted to vote for it, but then he turns to say that the problem with this amendment is that it would politicize the corporation, which is quite an astounding argument to make against it, when the entire purpose of our amendment is to prevent corporations from engaging in political expenditures and dark-money spending without the consent and the knowledge of the shareholders.

If you object to corporations being engaged in partisan political activity, then you should support this amendment, because it is precisely this amendment that will prevent it from happening if the shareholders don't want it to.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 145 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

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

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 145, providing for consideration of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, and H.R. 1112, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019.

The rule provides for consideration of each bill under a structured rule. The rule also provides 1 hour of general debate on each bill equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019 arrived at a time of emergency for America--a real emergency. Every year 120,000 Americans are shot in our country, and 35,000 of them are shot dead. Seventeen thousand of the people wounded or killed each year are children or teenagers, their families devastated, their lives forever changed.

In 2017, gun deaths in America hit the highest level in 40 years, with 40,000 Americans killed.

We have lost more Americans to gun violence in our own communities than to the Vietnam war, the Revolutionary

War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean war, the Iraq war, and the Afghan war, combined. This war at home never stops. Each day--yesterday, today, and tomorrow--another 100 people in America are shot and killed by gun violence.

Mr. Speaker, this is not a global problem; it is an American problem. While 35,000 Americans are killed by gunfire here each year, it is 146 people in the United Kingdom, 142 in Portugal, and 30 in Japan.

We lose more people to gun violence in a single weekend than England loses all year. We lost more people in the Las Vegas massacre alone, in one bloody night, than the nation of Japan lost to gun violence in 8 years.

No other developed, high-income country's lethal gun violence even comes close to the American carnage allowed by our loophole-ridden gun laws. The gun-related murder rate in the United States is 25 times higher than the average of other high-income countries and hundreds of times higher than some of them.

Now, the good news is that we know what to do to begin to end this crisis. We must close the loopholes.

In 1994, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act went into effect and required licensed firearm dealers to contact the FBI to run a background check through NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

The Brady Act made it illegal to sell a firearm to felons, to fugitives, to people who had been committed to mental institutions, to drug addicts, to domestic abusers, to undocumented immigrants, and to other disqualified categories.

The Brady Act worked as far as it went. It stopped more than 3 million illegal purchases of firearms by convicted felons, violently abusive partners, fugitives, the mentally ill, and so on. But there are gaping loopholes in the law because unlicensed gun sellers, the people who sell guns online today or at gun shows or in other private transactions, can sell firearms without having to run any background check whatsoever.

More than one-fifth of U.S. gun owners acquired their most recent firearm without any background check at all, which means that millions of people obtained millions of firearms without going through the Brady system, and people who commit gun crimes overwhelmingly obtain their firearms from the unlicensed sources. A 2013 study found that 80 percent of all firearms acquired for criminal purposes were obtained from sources that were not required to go through the background check.

The criminals are not stupid. They follow the loopholes. They go to the internet. They go to the gun shows. They go to the convenience store parking lots to get their weapons of mass destruction without any background check at all.

Our legislation will close these dangerous loopholes by guaranteeing that there is a thorough NICS background check on every gun sale or transfer, with only a few carefully defined exceptions for intrafamily gifts and a few other cases.

Mr. Speaker, there are three primary things you need to know about this legislation:

First, it is backed by more than 90 percent of the American people-- fully, 97 percent of Americans, including 97 percent of gun owners, 97 percent of Republicans, and 99 percent of Democrats. It is the very essence of common sense, the sense we all have in common, to make the background check system comprehensive and universal, leakproof, foolproof, and not ridden by the loopholes.

A background check doesn't work if criminals know that there are massive and lawful ways to cheat and get around it. So America, today, stands up to close the loopholes, and that is why this is a day of great triumph for the gun safety movement that has swept America in response to Parkland, Las Vegas, Newtown, and the other massacres that our people have endured.

Second, this legislation is perfectly constitutional. As Justice Scalia found for the Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, the Second Amendment permits reasonable regulation to exclude from gun ownership violent felons, the mentally unstable, and so on.

Despite all of the solemn invocations of the Second Amendment that we continue to hear bouncing off of the walls of Congress, the opponents of this legislation could not muster a single witness to actually argue that this legislation is unconstitutional, and that includes the George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law professor of constitutional law and the Second Amendment who was brought in and just expressed her policy misgivings about the bill without articulating any constitutional analysis at all and rejected the opportunity to say that this legislation is unconstitutional.

The reason 97 percent of Americans favor this legislation is because it is perfectly consistent with the letter and spirit of the Second Amendment, and it sweepingly advances public safety at the same time.

Third, this bill will dramatically lower gun violence in America. More than 90 percent of Brady background checks take less than 90 seconds to complete. But these checks have literally stopped more than 3 million illegal gun purchases by felons, fugitives, domestic offenders, the violently mentally ill, undocumented aliens, and so on. Every day, background checks stop 170 felons and 50 domestic abusers from purchasing a gun. Imagine how much more effective this system will be when we close these gaping loopholes.

Yet, even in the face of the shocking death toll which distinguishes our society from the other wealthy societies on Earth, despite the overwhelming public support for this legislation, and despite its clear constitutionality, our friends across the aisle oppose closing the internet, the gun show, and the private sale loopholes.

Instead of getting on our side to close the loopholes, what do they give us? More loopholes. They brought us dozens of amendments to try to suggest more loopholes to the current law.

That is obviously not the direction that America needs to go in, and you will hear some more about that today, Mr. Speaker. They have given us a veritable loophole factory. But now is the time to close loopholes, not reproduce them.

Let's focus on the public safety, which is the cardinal purpose of law in the social contract in a democratic society. Let's pass this excellent bill, and let's pass H.R. 1112, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019, which closes the Charleston loophole, the loophole that made it possible for a guy to go out and get a gun because the dealer decided to give him a gun after 3 days because they were still doing a background check.

This loophole says that if it has taken 3 days or more, you have a right to go ahead and get your gun. We are going to close that one, the so-called default proceed provision. We are going to close that one, too, so that we don't see any repeat massacres like the one that took place in June of 2015 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a statement by the National Task Force to End Sexual & Domestic Violence, which is in favor of this legislation and against any weakening amendments.

National Task Force To End Sexual & Domestic Violence

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic

Violence, a coalition comprising federal, state, local and

tribal organizations and individuals who have fought for

federal protections for survivors of domestic violence,

dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, oppose any

amendments to H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of

2019, that exempts any persons from the firearms background

check requirement. This includes amendments exempting victims

and survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault,

including those with protective orders.

Firearms pose a significant danger to victims of domestic

violence, and this is true no matter who owns the firearm.

Research shows that a male abuser's access to a firearm

increases the risk of intimate partner femicide fivefold and

does not support the contention that firearm possession is a

protective factor for the victim. The testimony of Christy

Salters Martin, a professional boxer and experienced gun

user, to the Senate Judiciary Committee illustrates this.

Despite her boxing prowess and familiarity with firearms, her

abuser was able to take her gun from her and shoot her with

it, narrowly missing her heart. Firearms do not make victims

of domestic violence safer; firearms put victims at greater

risk.

Furthermore, domestic abusers are adept at using the

justice system against victims. Abusers often accuse the

victim of being the perpetrator of violence, making police

reports and seeking protective orders. Abusers are also adept

at finding loopholes. If persons with protective orders are

exempted from the background check requirement, many abusers

who are prohibited from possessing firearms would seek

protective orders in order to circumvent the background check

requirement to obtain firearms to terrorize their victims.

Moreover, requiring a victim to undergo a firearms

background check is not a hurdle to obtaining a firearm. Most

firearm background checks are completed in under a minute. A

victim seeking to purchase a firearm would still be able to

do so quickly, unless the victim was legally prohibited from

possessing firearms.

Rather than adding dangerous exemptions to a law that is

supposed to protect victims and survivors of domestic

violence, Congress should focus on ensuring that adjudicated

domestic abusers do not possess firearms. This includes

ensuring federal firearms prohibitors protect all victims of

intimate partner violence, including dating partners, and

ensuring that domestic abusers who are prohibited from

possessing firearms relinquish their firearms. The best way

to protect victims is to disarm abusers.

Just to quote a small part of it: ``Firearms pose a significant danger to victims of domestic violence, and this is true no matter who owns the firearm. Research shows that a male abuser's access to a firearm increases the risk of intimate partner femicide fivefold and does not support the contention that firearm possession is a protective factor for the victim.''

And there is more in here of interest.

I would like to thank my distinguished colleague from Arizona for her thoughts on the question of sexual and domestic violence.

We, indeed, have a provision within the legislation which allows for an exemption from the background check requirement in cases of an imminent threat of great bodily harm.

The question has been raised: Does that include sexual assault, dating partner violence, stalking, and so on? We thought it was self- evident that it did, but, in any event, Representatives Horn from Oklahoma and Murphy from Florida are introducing a clarifying amendment to be very specific that it is included.

At that point, perhaps we could welcome the support of the distinguished gentlewoman from Arizona, because we are being very clear at that point that our exception for imminent bodily harm and violence includes sexual assault and so on.

I am certain that the gentlewoman's intentions are good, just as are the intentions of the offerers of the amendment in the bill.

Let me just address, in case the gentlewoman hasn't decided to come over to our side now, some of the general points that were made against the legislation.

The gentlewoman articulated an argument we have been hearing a lot of from our counterparts, which is that criminals don't follow the law and, therefore, there is no reason to get rid of the loopholes and strengthen the law, because criminals won't follow the law.

Now, the fallacy of that argument is plain to see. It is an argument against all law.

It is an argument against the law against murder because murderers obviously don't follow the law against murder.

It is an argument against the law opposed to theft because thieves don't follow the law against theft.

But I think anyone who takes time to really study what law is understands that the purpose of the law is to deter people from negative, socially harmful action, the way that the Brady Act has deterred more than 3 million people--felons, fugitives, the mentally unstable, and other unauthorized categories--from accessing a weapon.

Now, that argument sweeps so broadly that it is an argument against having the Brady Act that we have now, and perhaps that is the intention, simply to take down the law that we have got now.

Another purpose of law, of course, is to punish people who violate it and then, again, to send a moral message about what the social norms are.

And we have got social norms about driving, for example. Would we say we are not going to have driver's licenses in America because people who drive without a driver's license ignore the law requiring you to have a driver's license?

It is a completely nonsensical argument.

Let's come back to reality and talk about what the Brady Act actually requires the gun dealers to ask people.

Here are the basic questions that are being asked:

Are you under indictment for or have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Are you a fugitive from justice?

Are you an unlawful user of a controlled substance?

Do you suffer from mental illness?

Have you been dishonorably discharged from the Armed Forces?

Are you subject to a court order restraining you from harassing, stalking, or threatening your child or an intimate partner?

Have you ever been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence?

Have you renounced your United States citizenship?

Are you unlawfully present in the United States?

Mr. Speaker, those questions have created a dragnet that has allowed us to stop more than 3 million people from getting weapons who shouldn't have them.

But there are these big, gaping loopholes out there that they can go on the Internet and get one, or they can go to the parking lot of a convenience store in a private sale and get one, or they can go to a gun show and negotiate a private sale and get one without having to answer those questions.

Well, the American people have spoken on this. That is really why this is the first legislation advocating gun safety to hit the floor of the House of Representatives in a quarter of a century.

This is a great day for the gun safety movement that has overtaken America, rejecting the unconscionable toll of 100 people dead every single day in communities across the land.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), the sponsor of the underlying bill, H.R. 8, who has done such a magnificent job advocating this cause through thick and thin.

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

I suppose that we are in a rush to do anything, something, anything that works in order to curb the terrible toll of gun violence on our society.

In the last Congress it is true there was other legislation that was brought to us. One was a proposal to legalize silencers in America, which sounds to me more like an agenda of organized crime than it is of the U.S. Congress trying to seek public safety.

But there was this bipartisan Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which was a massive assault on federalism and States' rights. It would have destroyed every State's concealed carry law in the country to a level at the lowest common denominator. So if you could get a license to carry a concealed loaded weapon in one State--and in some States there are more than a million people who have been able to get them through completely permissive and lax laws--then you could go anywhere in the country. That is their proposal. That is what is coming out of the loophole factory.

I just would like to assure my friend that we have a provision in our legislation, if you read it carefully, which says that you can temporarily transfer a gun at a shooting range, at a shooting gallery, or for purposes of hunting, so he doesn't have to worry about this.

Our friends are either not reading carefully enough or they are overlooking very clear passages in our legislation which deal with commonsense concerns.

This is bipartisan legislation. It is backed by more than 90 percent of the American people, and it is going to advance common safety. So rather than searching for mysterious reasons to oppose it, why shouldn't everybody get together to say this is something that will promote the public safety?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

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

I want to thank my colleague for advancing our discussion here because I think now we are really starting to get somewhere.

The gentlewoman suggested an amendment which allows for the transfer of a firearm to a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault who has an order of protection issued by a court. That is an extremely narrow exception.

Most women who are enduring domestic violence don't have a civil protection order. Part of that is because of the incompetence of the laws in a lot of States, and part of it is because they haven't had the wherewithal to go and get one.

But our legislation and our amendment sweeps much more broadly. It allows any woman who is a victim of domestic violence, who faces a threat from their attacker, to be loaned a gun by a family member or be loaned a gun by a friend until the threat is resolved.

My friend suggests that there is something ambiguous about the words. I just don't see the ambiguity. Their original argument attacked the utility of all criminal law, saying we shouldn't have criminal laws, essentially, because criminals won't follow them.

This seems like an attack on law itself. Law depends upon language. But the language is clear here that if there is a threat and if you are suffering from the threat of domestic violence, sexual assault and so on, then you can get the gun.

Who interprets it? Well, you have got the right to go out and get it. If someone were to prosecute you for doing that, the prosecution would clearly lose.

So I am afraid that our friends are looking for problems in this bipartisan legislation which simply don't exist.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, first, to clarify one thing, this is bipartisan legislation. We have at least five Republicans who are cosponsoring and supporting this legislation. I assume my friend doesn't mean to read those five Republican Members of the House of Representatives out of her caucus.

I am not quite sure what happened in Maine, but I know that there are around a dozen States and the District of Columbia that have already gotten rid of the loopholes that we are going to get rid of today in this Federal legislation.

My friend also invokes Second Amendment rights. I thought that we had put that red herring to rest in 2008 in Heller v. District of Columbia. Justice Scalia said that reasonable regulation to screen out felons and fugitives and the mentally unstable is perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.

Everybody on both sides of the aisle favors the Second Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. If you are going to oppose this legislation, you have to base it on some public safety rationale and not pretend like anybody has made a constitutional argument, because nobody has made a constitutional argument.

Finally, on the question of the domestic violence amendment, I would invite my friend to come on over, and we would gladly have unanimous consent to have her added to the amendment, which is the broader amendment she is talking about. Of course, her amendment was the narrow one, which required you to have a civil protection order before there would be an exception from the provisions of the legislation.

She said she was misdirected by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. All I can say is the legislative process is a treacherous place and a rocky road for people in the minority. I have been dealing with that for several years. In any event, we would love to have you join the amendment now. Mr. Speaker, I make that offer to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), who is the great and distinguished chairman of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

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

Mr. Speaker, far from trying to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, our legislation will save law-abiding citizens from criminals, simply by expanding the successful Brady law, which has been in effect for decades now.

The gentlewoman introduces a constitutional argument at the last minute here, saying that our legislation is unconstitutional because there may be undue fees imposed. Of course, those are the fees that are currently imposed under the Brady law, so I am afraid that my friend has just made an argument for the unconstitutionality of the current law, which has saved us from more than 3 million felons, fugitives, mentally unstable people, drug abusers, and undocumented aliens from acquiring firearms in the country.

Mr. Speaker, our country is a social contract. I know we have got a lot of young people here today. We are a social contract. If you go back and read any of the social contracts--there is Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, or Thomas Jefferson--any of them say, we leave a state of nature, which is a state of war and a state of violence, in order to live in a civilized way.

But how civilized is it when tens of thousands of Americans, every year, are being killed in firearm violence? Every day, another hundred Americans are killed with guns.

In 2017, the highest level in 40 years, nearly 40,000 Americans died from gun violence. That is not a civilized state. That is a state of war. That is a state of violence.

We know what the loopholes are, and we are going to close the loopholes with our bipartisan legislation, which has support from Republicans and it has support from Democrats. The public opinion polls show that more than 95 percent of the American people support what we are trying to do here--close the gun show loophole, close the private sale loophole, close the internet loophole--make sure that everybody who purchases a gun in America is purchasing it only with the universal comprehensive mental and criminal background check.

We have amendments for the discrete exceptions that are necessary, including in cases of imminent violence, including rape and sexual assault via domestic violence. We think that this legislation is excellent legislation that every Member of Congress should feel proud voting for.

Mr. Speaker, I submit both H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Check Act, as well as the bill to close the Charleston loophole, so that criminals are not given guns after 3 days. We are able to delay that process in the event that more investigation is needed.

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