Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the important work of the Rachel Carson Council (RCC), which is named after the visionary marine biologist, nature writer and environmentalist who was a proud resident of Silver Spring, Maryland.

Founded and based in Bethesda, the RCC pays tribute to Rachel Carson's imperishable legacy by linking environmental, health, and social policy solutions ``with the goal of building a more just, sustainable, and peaceful future.''

The RCC recently released a comprehensive report called ``Clear Cut,'' examining wood pellet production and its adverse effects on the health and sustainability of our forests and communities. The report details the process by which Southeastern forests are being cut down, chopped up, and dehydrated before being shipped and burned as carbon- intense fuel.

According to the report, despite being touted as a ``green'' alternative to fossil fuels, the sourcing of wood pellets contributes to widespread deforestation and pollution throughout much of the American Southeast. In North Carolina alone, the largest producer of wood pellets, Enviva, clear cuts more than 50 acres of forest each day. Left standing, these forests would help control the climate, maintain the biodiversity of our ecosystems, and filter our air and water.

Following this environmentally invasive sourcing process of clear- cutting, pellets are burned, producing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NO), and carbon monoxide (CO2), all of which pose serious health risks to human beings. Although the pollutants emitted by wood pellet mills are indiscriminately harmful to nearby inhabitants, the RCC report notes that wood pellet mills have been disproportionally constructed near poor communities of color, which are bearing the disproportionate burdens of deforestation, including poor air quality and increased flood risks.

Although the environmental drawbacks of wood pellet production are clear--wood pellet mills emit approximately 65-percent more C02 per megawatt hour than modern coal plants--the RCC argues that the industry has continued to mislead the public about the sustainability of this practice. Moreover, the RCC's report concludes that the expansion of the wood pellet industry is making it harder for us to maintain our environmental standards and address the global crisis of climate change.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to review the well-researched and well-documented ``Clear Cut'' report by visiting the RCC website at www.rachelcarsoncouncil.org. We must keep the profound concerns raised in this report in mind as we enact environmental, forestry, and energy policies and work to protect the public health and safety.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 87 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), 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 have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 87, providing for consideration of H.R. 790, the Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019.

The rule provides for consideration of the legislation under a structured rule. The rule self-executes a manager's amendment, which strikes section 3 of the bill and makes certain other technical corrections to it.

The rule makes in order three amendments. The rule provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Finally, the rule provides suspension authority through the legislative day of February 8, 2019.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 790 will provide for a 2.6 percent pay increase for Federal civilian workers in 2019, beginning with the date of passage, and this brings the civilian pay increase in parity with the automatic adjustment of pay for military servicemembers, which is also 2.6 percent.

The President's fiscal year 2019 budget requested a 2.6 percent increase in basic pay for military servicemembers equivalent to the statutory formula. This increase went into effect on January 1. But on August 30 of last year, President Trump announced that he would issue a downward adjustment of the pay increase for civilian employees because of a national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare. He proposed to set the civilian pay increase at zero, no raise.

On December 28 of last year, he followed through on this announcement by signing an executive order overriding the automatic 2.1 percent pay increase civilian workers were set to receive and replacing it with zero. Congress can override and Congress should override this executive order with legislation providing for a pay increase for our hardworking Federal civilian workers. H.R. 790 does just that with a reasonable 2.6 percent increase, matching the increase going into effect for military servicemembers.

Mr. Speaker, if there is any redeeming feature to the sordid chaos of the 35-day government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, surely, it is that it reminded America that our Federal workforce is indispensable to our commerce, to our economy, to our society, and to our way of life.

We have been reminded that if you take away the air traffic controllers, you take away air travel. If you take away the Transportation Security Administration agents, you take away transportation security.

If you take away the Park Service rangers and the Park Service maintenance personnel, you take away our ability to enjoy the national parks free of liter, garbage, backed-up sewage, and criminal activity.

If you take away the food safety inspectors from the FDA and other agencies, you threaten the food supply with E. coli, salmonella, and insect infestation.

If you shut down the EPA, you empower the polluters to foul the air and dirty the waters.

If you shut down the Department of Justice, you throw a monkey wrench into the ability of law enforcement to go after the Mafia, Medicare fraud, white-collar crime, human trafficking, and all of the criminal enterprises endangering public safety.

If you shut down the National Weather Service, you threaten transportation, travel, and public safety.

If you stop paying Customs and Border Protection officers, you weaken border security and you demoralize our Border Patrol.

If you shut down NOAA, you disable America's first responders in the campaign to meet the challenges of climate change.

All of it has an effect on the private sector, too. If you furlough the people writing checks for home mortgages, farm subsidies, State Department personnel, and private contractor payments, you threaten to ruin private contractors, home purchases, small farmers, and small businesses.

If you were to cut off the VA, you would cut off the veterans.

And if you were to pull the plug on the Social Security Administration, you would threaten tens of millions of Americans who depend on Social Security.

The contribution that more than 2.1 million Federal employees make to our country is indispensable; it is incalculable; and it is irreplaceable.

Mr. Speaker, throughout the 35-day self-identified Donald Trump shutdown, the American people not only witnessed the surpassing dedication and patriotism of the Federal workforce, 30 percent of which is made up of veterans, but we were reminded of the critical nature of the work that they do for all of us. They deserve a raise, and we should override President Trump's insulting and embarrassing 2019 pay freeze for the Federal workforce.

To be clear, Federal workers deserved a raise before the shutdown. The Federal Salary Council, an advisory body of the executive branch established to provide recommendations on locality pay, found at the end of last year that, ``Federal employee salaries on average lag behind those of the private sector by almost 31 percent,'' a finding based on U.S. Department of Labor data covering more than 250 different occupational categories.

900,000 Federal workers earn less than $60,000 a year, and we have seen in the soup kitchens and in the pantries, and the desperate pleas of our constituents for their families, how many Federal workers are just one or two paychecks away from disaster.

So Federal workers deserved a raise before the shutdown when 800,000 of them were furloughed or compelled to go to work without any pay and they had to take out loans from family members or credit unions just to pay their monthly bills.

They deserved a raise before President Trump imposed the Federal hiring freeze in 2017 and before he froze Federal worker pay in 2019.

They deserved a raise before he tried to cut their health benefits and before he issued three executive orders that would have made it easier to fire Federal workers and destroy their collective bargaining rights, orders that were promptly struck down in Federal court.

But if the Federal workers deserved a raise and needed one before President Trump declared war on the workforce for the American Government, before Steve Bannon defined the goal of the administration as ``deconstruction of the administrative state,'' before they were derided by the President as Democrats and vilified as the deep state, surely, the economic and moral debacle of the shutdown makes this modest 2.6 percent pay raise a powerful and inescapable imperative today.

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government simply must do much better as an employer of our own people. How many private employers would try to retain their best workers and attract great new workers by attacking and furloughing the workforce, by accusing the employees of disloyalty, by freezing their pay, and then by compelling them to work for 35 days with no salary at all? It would never work for the vast majority of private-sector employers.

All over America, we read of workers demoralized and defeated, thinking of leaving their Federal jobs because of the sheer folly and cruelty of this most recent episode and because the President, I am sorry to report, is again threatening another shutdown with nothing but complicity from many of our friends across the aisle.

On top of all the anxiety induced by the shutdown, we know that between 30 and 35 percent of the Federal workforce is eligible to retire within the next 5 years. How will we replace them and replenish the ranks of this embattled and besieged workforce?

These are our people, Mr. Speaker. These are our workers. These are our constituents. These are the people who make America work.

Federal workers do not live the lifestyles of the rich and famous. They don't jet down to Mar-a-Lago at personal or government expense. And they can't afford the $36 cheeseburger at the Trump Hotel.

The Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, will never be able to figure out why they can't just call up a friendly banker for a loan, just as Lara Trump will not be able to see why the 35-day shutdown caused something more than an eentsy-weentsy ``little bit of pain'' for them as they are invited to suffer in service of the greater glory of the Trump administration agenda.

Our public servants, civilian and military alike, deserve better from us, whether they work as a civilian officer or uniformed officer at the Pentagon; whether they are safeguarding air travel or the air or the water or the climate or our food supply; whether they are taking care of our treasured national parks; or treating breast cancer patients or finding the cure for cystic fibrosis or multiple sclerosis; or running our museums; or cutting Social Security checks; or preparing the President's meals at the White House; or guarding the coastline with the Coast Guard; or making the justice system work as judges, prosecutors, defenders, clerks, and marshals. They deserve better from us.

They need a pay raise, not a pay freeze. They deserve our respect, not our contempt. They don't ask to be deified, but they don't deserve to be demonized.

They have an important job to do. Let's pay them for it. Let's invest in our Federal workforce. I urge all of our colleagues to come together to pass H.R. 790, the Federal Civilian Workforce Pay Raise Fairness Act of 2019.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my dear friend from Georgia for his thoughtful comments, especially for conceding that the Federal workers do deserve a paycheck at the end of the week, and I am glad that we can start off a new season here where we agree that Federal workers deserve and need to be paid. I suppose we still have this difference about whether or not they deserve a pay raise.

Yes, the substance is clear. We are fighting for a 2.6 percent pay raise for the Federal civilian workforce to match the 2.6 percent pay raise that has gone into effect for the military servicemembers who are serving our country with their hard work and their sacrifice.

Mr. Speaker, our message is clear. There is a message that is built into there, because when you are deciding whether or not to give your workers a raise or give them a pay freeze or you are deciding whether or not to praise them or to compel them to work for free for 35 days or to furlough them, there is a message built into that. So we are the employer of these 2 million people who have come to work for the Federal Government, and there is a message there.

It is not just the money for their families, it is not just the money to pay the mortgage and to pay the rent and for the car bills and for the food bills and for health insurance and so on. There is a message there, and the message is simple: we stand with the Federal workers.

That is the message. We embrace that message that is built into the pay raise here.

But I have to disagree with my friend if he says that all we are doing is sending that message that we stand with the Federal workers. That is not all we are doing, we are giving them a pay raise they deserve. We have got tens of thousands of people who work at the Pentagon who go dressed as military servicemembers every day, and we have tens of thousands who go dressed as civilians, they work side by side, and they work together for the country.

Shouldn't they all get a pay raise?

Don't all of them deserve a pay raise?

Now, Mr. Speaker, my friend invites us to believe that because we are giving the workforce a pay raise, we can't continue to implement civil service rules that are meant to get rid of the rare bad apple that you get in the Federal workforce.

Why not?

Why can't we use the other mechanisms that are in place to reward workers?

If we want to improve those, then I am so happy to work with my friend on the Rules Committee to develop legislation to do that. But I am afraid that is an irrelevant distraction from the matter at hand. The matter at hand today is whether or not we are going to give the same pay raise to civilian workers that we have given to military workers.

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

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

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

The gentleman from Georgia has given me a lot to think about here.

The very first thing that I need to clear up is that 85 percent of the Federal workforce does not live in the national capital region. It is true that the local delegations from Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia are sensitive to these continuing assaults on the Federal workforce because we have so many workers who live here, but, again, 85 percent of the workforce lives all over the country.

I just learned that there are 100,000 civilian Federal workers in Georgia who also were affected by this government shutdown and lockout of the Federal workers, and I am sure the distinguished gentleman from Georgia heard the same kinds of complaints from his constituents that I heard from mine about not being able to balance their checkbooks, not being able to pay the mortgage or pay the rent because of what took place with the shutdown.

The President froze Federal worker pay without any hearings. The President froze Federal worker pay without any markups, and he did it without consulting any of us. That is something that he did.

Now, of course, we know that the 115th Congress, the last Congress, became famous--or perhaps I should say infamous--for being the most closed Congress in U.S. history, bringing us the most number of closed rules on the floor, shutting down debate, bringing us so many bills without hearings or markup.

We would have loved to have been able to have hearings and markup for this bill, but the Committee on Oversight and Reform wasn't organized until yesterday. We are all recovering from the shocks of the Federal Government shutdown. We are all trying to catch our breath from what has been imposed on the country. We have been consumed entirely with the question of the government shutdown.

So when the new rules come into focus and are activated on March 1, which is when they are supposed to come in, we have every intention of being a dramatically more open Congress than what we saw in the last Congress.

But we appreciate the push from our friends. They should give us the push. Certainly, they know what it is like to close down debate because they did it for so many years.

Now I understand they are suggesting, as a substitute resolution, what they want instead is a prohibition on raises for Federal employees with delinquent tax debt.

It is very clear that the Federal civilian workforce is graded on an annual basis, and you can get five different kinds of rankings. These are dealt with in the promotion process, in all kinds of personnel actions, including exclusion and separation in cases of delinquency where Federal workers are not performing. So the idea that the Federal civil service has existed all of this time without the ability to have incentives and disincentives and sanctions for nonperformance is, of course, quite apart from reality.

I am amazed that my friends would be immodest enough to raise the question of taxes in their opposition to this legislation. The first problem, of course, is that they passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthiest corporations and people in America--$1.5 trillion.

Mr. Speaker, a trillion dollars is a thousand billion dollars.

So they piled what it is going to be a $1.9 trillion addition to our national debt over the next decade, at least. The

Congressional Budget Office estimates that it adds at least $1.9 trillion to our debt, yet they come back and say that they don't want to give a 2.6 percent pay increase to our Federal workers, who were just furloughed or compelled to go to work with no pay for the last 35 days.

Prohibition on raises for Federal employees with delinquent tax debt, that is their attempt to distract everybody from the pay raise that America's Federal workforce needs.

What about the President of the United States? What about his taxes? Are they finally going to support release of President Trump's taxes, which is what the last four decades of Presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have done?

No. They maintain a demure and respectful silence towards the President on that one. They are not interested in the President releasing his taxes, but they want to use the fact that maybe there is a Federal worker who wasn't able to pay his or her taxes as justification for not giving America's Federal workforce a pay raise. That is quite remarkable to me, Mr. Speaker.

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

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

My friend from Georgia eloquently calls us back to bipartisanship, and I could not agree more. I would love nothing more than for him and for all of our colleagues across the aisle to join us in supporting the 2.6 percent pay raise for America's Federal workforce.

I almost feel as though, if we were to add the names of our distinguished colleagues on the other side to the bill, they might support it. So I would reopen that offer and restate that offer: We invite everybody to come on and to be cosponsors with us in giving America's Federal workforce a pay raise right now.

But we do have to think about this in bipartisan-nonpartisan terms.

It was the President of the United States who maligned the Federal workforce, apparently, from his perspective, by calling them Democrats, and there are two problems with that.

One, it is not true. I have got lots of Republicans who work as Federal employees. I have got lots of Independents who work as Federal employees, as well as Democrats, as well as Greens, as well as people who are not affiliated with any party at all and are probably sick of a lot of the partisanship that goes on here in Washington.

Think about what the real problem with the President deriding Federal workers as Democrats is. The real problem is that they are Americans. We are all Americans. We stand together as Americans. That is why we have got to stand behind our Federal workforce.

I want to just clear up one other thing that has been bugging me, because the gentleman from Georgia is so persuasive in his tactics, and he kind of mixed apples and oranges.

We are talking about a pay raise for the workforce, and he said: Well, maybe most of the workers deserve one, but there might be some who don't.

I just want to state generally what the procedure is for evaluating Federal workers. Federal agencies use formal performance-rating programs for almost all of their career employees, typically with five different levels. The ratings are used in deciding on promotions, merit pay increases, cash awards, or discipline.

In the most severe cases, low-performing employees can be disciplined and removed from their jobs.

Now, the gentleman, I am sure, has some ideas for how we can improve that system and make it better. By all means, let's discuss that, but let's not cloud the issue of the fact that our workers need a raise.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule.

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 5 o'clock and 14 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, January 30, 2019, at 9 a.m.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to share an excellent op-ed written by my colleague Mr. Bill Pascrell, entitled, ``Why is Congress so dumb?'' In this lucid essay, Rep. Pascrell discusses the systematic demolition of Congress' power to assemble accurate information, conduct investigations and develop sound policy. It is an imperative of the 116th Congress that we rebuild Congressional capacity to govern with the information we need. In his piece, which appeared in the Washington Post, Mr. Pascrell writes:

In a year of congressional low lights, the hearings we held

with Silicon Valley leaders last fall may have been the

lowest. One of my colleagues in the House asked Google CEO

Sundar Pichai about the workings of an iPhone--a rival Apple

product. Another colleague asked Face book head Mark

Zuckerberg, ``If you're not listening to us on the phone, who

is?'' One senator was flabbergasted to learn that Facebook

makes money from advertising. Over hours of testimony, my

fellow members of Congress struggled to grapple with

technologies used daily by most Americans and with the

functions of the Internet itself. Given an opportunity to

expose the most powerful businesses on Earth to sunlight and

scrutiny, the hearings did little to answer tough questions

about the tech titans' monopolies or the impact of their

platforms. It's not because lawmakers are too stupid to

understand Facebook. It's because our available resources and

our policy staffs, the brains of Congress, have been so

depleted that we can't do our jobs properly.

Americans who bemoan a broken Congress rightly focus on

ethical questions and electoral partisanship. But the tech

hearings demonstrated that our greatest deficiency may be

knowledge, not cooperation. Our founts of independent

information have been cut off, our investigatory muscles

atrophied, our committees stripped oftheir ability to develop

policy, our small staffs overwhelmed by the army of lobbyists

who roam Washington. Congress is increasingly unable to

comprehend a world growing more socially, economically and

technologically multifaceted--and we did this to ourselves.

When the 110th Congress opened in 2007, Democrats rode into

office on a tide of outrage at the George W. Bush

administration and the Republican Congress, which had looked

the other way during the Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Duke

Cunningham scandals. My colleagues and I focused our energies

on exposing corruption. But we missed crucial

opportunities to reform the institution of Congress. As my

party assumes a new majority in the House, we confront

similar circumstances and have a second chance to begin the

hard work of nursing our chamber back to strength.

Our decay as an institution began in 1995, when

conservatives, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.),

carried out a full-scale war on government. Gingrich began by

slashing the congressional workforce by one-third. He aimed

particular ire at Congress's brain, firing 1 of every 3

staffers at the Government Accountability Office, the

Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget

Office. He defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, a

tech-focused think tank. Social scientists have called those

moves Congress's self-lobotomy, and the cuts remain largely

unreversed.

Gingrich's actions didn't stop with Congress's mind: He

went for its arms and legs, too, as he dismantled the

committee system, taking power from chairmen and shifting it

to leadership. His successors as speaker have entrenched this

practice. While there was a 35 percent decline in committee

staffing from 1994 to 2014, funding over that period for

leadership staff rose 89 percent.

This imbalance has defanged many of our committees, as

bills originating in leadership offices and K Street suites

are forced through without analysis or alteration. Very

often, lawmakers never even see important legislation until

right before we vote on it. During the debate over the

Republicans' 2017 tax package, hours before the floor vote,

then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) tweeted a lobbying firm's

summary of GOP amendments to the bill before she and her

colleagues had had a chance to read the legislation. A

similar process played out during the Republicans' other

signature effort of the last Congress, the failed repeal of

the Affordable Care Act. Their bill would have remade one-

sixth ofthe U.S. economy, but it was not subject to hearings

and was introduced just a few hours before being voted on in

the dead of night. This is what happens when legislation is

no longer grown organically through hearings and debate.

Congress does not have the resources to counter the growth

of corporate lobbying. Between 1980 and 2006, the number of

organizations in Washington with lobbying arms more than

doubled, and lobbying expenditures between 1983 and 2013

ballooned from $200 million to $3.2 billion. A stunning 2015

study found that corporations now devote more resources to

lobby Congress than Congress spends to fund itself. During

the 2017 fight over the tax legislation, the watchdog group

Public Citizen found that there were more than 6,200

registered tax lobbyists, vs. 130 aides on the Senate Finance

Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation, a staggering

ratio approaching 50-to-1 disfavoring the American people. In

2016 in the House, there were just 1,300 aides on all

committees combined, a number that includes clerical and

communications workers. Our expert policy staffs are dwarfed

by the lobbying class.

The practical impact of this disparity is impossible to

overstate as lobbyists flood our offices with information on

issues and legislation--information on which many lawmakers

have become reliant. Just a few weeks ago, at the end of the

session, I witnessed the biennial tradition of departing

members of Congress relinquishing their suites to the

incoming class. As lawmakers emptied their desks and

cabinets, the office hallways were clogged with dumpsters

overflowing with reports, white papers, massaged data and

other materials, a perfect illustration of the proliferating

junk dropped off by lobbyists.

Congress remade its committees in the 1970s to challenge

Richard Nixon's presidency and move power to rank-and-file

lawmakers. Many segregationist chairmen were ousted and

replaced by reformers, and committees and subcommittees were

given flexibility to study issues under their purview. It's

no accident that some of the most significant legislation and

oversight by Congress--Title IX; the Clean Water Act; the

Watergate, Pike and Church hearings--came from this period.

Congress had strengthened its pillars, hired smart people and

accessed the best information available.

Following the reforms of the 1970s, the House held some

6,000 hearings per year. But eventually, the number of House

hearings fell--from a tick above 4,000 in 1994 to barely more

than 2,000 in 2014. On the tax-writing Ways and Means

Committee, of which I am a member, oversight hearings are

virtually nonexistent, as is developing legislation. We had

no hearings in 2017 on the bill that would dramatically

rewrite our tax code. And in the last Congress, we didn't

haul in any administration officials for a single public

hearing on the renegotiation ofthe North American Free Trade

Agreement. Assessing this state of affairs in a 2017 report,

the Congressional Management Foundation noted that committees

``have been meeting less often than at almost any other time

in recent history.'' This neglect has become the norm.

Instead, leadership, lobbyists and the White House decide how

to solve policy problems.

Indeed, Congress has allowed the White House to dominate

policymaking. Trade is a perfect illustration. Despite our

current president's braggadocio, most Americans would be

surprised to learn ultimate trade power rests with Congress.

But over and over we've willingly, even eagerly, handed off

that responsibility given to us by Article I, Section 8 of

the Constitution. President Trump's power to renegotiate

NAFTA was granted by Congress, as was his power to issue

tariffs, allowed under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. I

disagreed with the decision in 2015 to give President Barack

Obama--a member of my own party--fast track power to advance

the Trans-Pacific Partnership. During that debate, I sat

stupefied as some members of our committee sought to award

not only Obama but also future, unknown executives an

extended and open-ended authority to make other deals.

Congress was prepared to simply abdicate our job.

Perhaps the most striking instance of political

interference I've seen in my career occurred in the Ways and

Means Committee in 2014. Then-Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.)

had toiled for months with Democrats, Republicans and budget

experts to craft a comprehensive tax reform bill. I may not

have loved the final product, but I respected the process.

Republican leadership killed the proposal almost immediately

after it was unveiled. The reason? They wanted to deny Obama

a legislative accomplishment.

For decades, nearly every piece of legislation would reach

the floor via committee, but beginning in the 1990s, the rate

began to drop. In the 113th Congress, approximately 40

percent of big-ticket legislation bypassed committees. Before

1994, Camp would have informed the speaker of his proposal

and brought it to the floor. Now, a chairman has much less

power to realize meaningful legislation. Meanwhile,

longstanding House rules have essentially blocked the

amendment process on the floor, meaning bills can't be

modified by members of the wider chamber.

In addition to committee weakness, House lawmakers

collectively employ fewer staffers today than they did in

1980. Between 1980 and 2016, when the U.S. population rose by

nearly 97 million people and districts grew by 40 percent on

average (about 200,000 people per seat), the number of aides

in House member offices decreased, to 6,880, and total House

staff increased less than 1 percent, to 9,420.

The first lobe of Congress's brain we can bulk back up is

the Congressional Research Service. The CRS provides studies

from talented experts spanning law, defense, trade, science,

industry and other realms. Some of our greatest oversight

triumphs--Watergate, Iran-contra, the Freedom of information

Act--were achieved with the CRS's support. Great nations

build libraries, and much of the CRS is housed in the Library

of Congress's Madison Building.

But the CRS has become a political target. In 2012, a CRS

report finding that tax cuts do not generate revenue enraged

my Republican colleagues, who had the report pulled and began

browbeating CRS experts. According to figures supplied by the

CRS, the next year, the service saw its funding cut by $5

million, nearly 5 percent, recovering to previous levels only

in 2015. (The CRS did get big funding bumps in recent years.)

The Congressional Budget Office and the Government

Accountability Office, crown jewels of our body that provide

nonpartisan budget projections, are similarly ignored or

maligned for partisan purposes. Last year, when the CBO

debunked claims that the GOP tax plan would create jobs,

Republicans savaged the agency instead of improving the law.

It reminded one of my colleagues, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.),

of an episode of`The Simpsons'' in which Springfield

residents, rescued from a hurtling comet, resolve to raze the

town observatory.

The GAO also furnishes rich information to Congress on

virtually any subject. Last year I requested and obtained a

study on the live-events ticket market. It was a probing

report with fresh data. Former senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.),

one of the most conservative lawmakers of the past

generation, praised the GAO, estimating that every dollar of

funding for the agency potentially saved Americans $90.

Nonetheless, from 1980 to 2015, GAO staffing was cut by one-

fifth. While I never had the pleasure of collaborating with

the Office of Technology Assessment, its reputation is

legendary. Like the GAO, it operated as a think tank for

Congress, tasked with studying science and technology issues.

The OTA was Congress's only agency solely conducting

scholarly work on these issues until Gingrich disemboweled

it. Today, few members of Congress know it ever existed. The

congressional hearings on big tech showcased my colleagues'

inability to wrap their heads around basic technologies. But

our challenges don't stop at Silicon Valley. Biomedical

research, CRISPR, space exploration, artificial intelligence,

election security, self-driving cars and, most pressingly,

climate change are also on Congress's plate.

And we are functioning like an abacus seeking to decipher

string theory. By one estimate, the federal government spends

$94 billion on information technology, while Congress spends

$0 on independent assessments of technology issues. We are

crying out for help to guide our thinking on these emerging

areas. I have backed motions to bring the OTA back to life,

and I was heartened last year when the House Appropriations

Committee approved funding for a study on the feasibility of

a new OTA.

The creation in the House rules of a Select Committee for

the Modernization of Congress in this new I session is a

terrific beginning--and a signal that Speaker Nancy Pelosi

(D-Calif.) and Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-

Mass.) understand the importance of these issues. Providing

capital and staff to the institution should be a major

priority in the 116th Congress. The

budgets we approve fund 445 executive departments, agencies,

commissions and other federal bodies. But for every $3,000

the United States spends per American on government programs,

we allocate only $6 to oversee them.

After decades of disinvesting in itself, Congress has

become captured by outside interests and partisans. Lawmakers

should be guided by independent scholars, researchers and

policy specialists. We must recognize our difficulties in

comprehending an impossibly complex world. Undoing the

mindless destruction of 1994 will take a lot of effort, but

with investment, we can make Congress work again.

Madam Speaker, I thank Ms. Pingree and Mr. Perlmutter for their leadership.

I welcome all questions from you guys and any other colleagues here, and from any Republicans present. Anybody who wants to pose a question to me, I am all for it.

Madam Speaker, Lara Trump, who is President Trump's daughter-in-law and

re-election campaign adviser, recently had a message for the furloughed workers and people working without pay. It will all be worth it, she assures us. ``Listen, it's not fair to you, and we all get that; but this is so much bigger than any one person,'' she said in an interview with ``Bold TV''. ``It is a little bit of pain, but it's going to be for the future of our country.''

No, this is not a little bit of pain. A little bit of pain is losing your earring at the White House Christmas party. That is a little bit of pain.

This is a lot of pain that the American people are experiencing right now. It is day 34, and tens of thousands of my constituents are suffering because of the shutdown. Military veteran air traffic controllers in Frederick County are being forced to work with no pay, and having to borrow money from their kids' 529 college accounts, with a 10 percent penalty, in order to put food on the table and to pay their mortgage.

FDA workers living in Bethesda sent home from the job with no pay, when they are supposed to be keeping our food supply safe from E. coli, salmonella and insect infestation.

Dozens of scientists, researchers, secretaries, technicians, park rangers, IT workers, all thrust into a nightmare of closed offices, closed daycare, no gross pay, no net pay, and a suffering economy.

There are thousands of private contract employees in my district, Madam Speaker, who have not earned a dollar in a month, and they are never going to get repaid for it.

There are Uber drivers telling me they are making one-third of what they usually make because our regional economy is depressed in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C., because of the government shutdown. And we know that that is symptomatic of what is going on across the country, because more than 80 percent of Federal workers don't live in the national capital region.

One of my constituents has been a Federal employee for 27 years, first in the Interior Department, and then in the National Park Service, who says: ``This is the first time that I've had to question whether I made the right choice in public service, and the first time I've had to reach into my retirement funds to make sure that my wife and I can pay our bills as they come due this week and next.''

He describes fellow Park Service employees living lives of quiet desperation. And of course they would be, because they are being maligned and typecast by the President of the United States, who derides all of the Federal workers as Democrats. He says they're all Democrats.

Well, first of all, it is not true. But what difference does it make? They are Americans.

We used to have Presidents of the United States who stood with all Americans, not with those from a particular political party, not just with those who agreed with the President or showed blind loyalty to the President. We used to have Presidents who were loyal to the American people and to our Constitution.

``All are suffering,'' my constituent writes, ``mostly silently, not looking for pity, but just for Congress and the White House to do their job.''

Now, we might think this shutdown is some kind of freak outburst by an admittedly erratic and impetuous President. But, Madam Speaker, I represent tens of thousands of Federal workers, and I am afraid that there is a method to this madness, and I know what it is; because I was there in January 2017 when the President issued an executive order freezing all Federal hiring, demoralizing, and even crippling agencies throughout our government.

I was there when they adopted, in January of 2017, the Holman Rule, giving Congress the power to reduce Federal workers' salaries, and even abolish their positions, simply by slipping riders into appropriations bills.

I watched them try to ban the use of the words ``climate change'' by Federal scientists in official documents. And I saw them propose hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Federal workers' wages and health benefits.

I saw the President, in September of last year, announce his decision to rescind modest, across-the-board, statutory pay increases and locality pay increases of 1.9 percent for the Federal workforce. And I have watched them try to bust the Federal worker unions by making it easier to fire Federal employees and trying to undo the existing collective bargaining contracts, a series of moves that were fought by the AFGE and NTEU and were finally reversed in court.

Madam Speaker, the original political philosopher of this administration, Steve Bannon, told us very clearly what was the principal and overriding political aim of this administration when he essentially declared war on our government and its workforce.

He stated at the outset of the administration that the new administration is in an unending battle for a deconstruction of the administrative state. ``Every day it is going to be a fight,'' he said. And by the administrative state, he means my constituents, who are working to protect our air, protect our water, protect our planet and the climate at the EPA, at NOAA, and throughout the Federal Government.

He means the civil servants at the Department of Justice who are prosecuting mobsters and white collar criminals; the IRS agents who are trying to catch tax scofflaws and collect money so we have a government.

He means the people at NOAA who are trying to save us from the horrors of ocean acidification, the collapse of the glaciers, and the cataclysmic weather events that have overtaken us in the age of global warming.

He means the hardworking scientists and researchers at the NIH who are working to cure colon cancer and breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, and multiple sclerosis, and even malignant narcissistic personality disorder.

Madam Speaker, does America recognize what is happening to us? We have a President who has essentially declared war on our own government, on our own civil servants. This is a complete betrayal of the oath of office. He is sworn to uphold and defend the law, not to frustrate and thwart it.

The first paragraph of the Constitution creates a covenant to form a more perfect union, but the President has given us the longest shutdown in American history. He is driving a wedge through the union.

To establish justice. But they have defunded the Department of Justice.

To ensure domestic tranquility, but the Department of Homeland Security is not being funded and our Border Patrol agents are being forced to work with no pay.

To provide for the common defense, but our Coast Guard officers have been held hostage, along with the rest of the Federal workforce.

To promote the general welfare, but 800,000 Federal workers are being forced to work with no pay, or sent home from jobs that the American people desperately want them to do.

And to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, but, instead, we are now threatening to bequeath to our children a dysfunctional government, degraded regulatory capacity to clean our air and water, a chaotic and unequal economy, and a comprehensive climate disaster.

And who wins? Who benefits? Who profits from it?

Well, we know it is not the American people. The overwhelming number of American people in every poll says open up the government right now. Put the Federal workers back to work.

And it is not the Federal workforce, which has been put through hell over the last month. It is not the business community, which is suffering. It is none of us who are benefiting, because the whole economy is hurting.

But Donald Trump has a profound admiration for autocrats and kleptocrats, tyrants and dictators all over the world. Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, the homicidal Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. All of these are the heroes of the President, and it must be a delicious sight for them to see as the President dismantles the government of our own country.

They don't shut down the government in Russia. They are not shutting down the government in Hungary. They are not shutting down the government in the Philippines, but he has shut down our own government.

Who wins? Who benefits from this outrageous and scandalous offense against America?

Well, it is not a partisan issue. I think the American people are increasingly unified every day against this horror.

And now we had the first great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, who unified America by working to save the Union and defend the government.

And now we have got a Republican President who is driving a wedge through the Union, and has closed the government down. Will that be his legacy? Will this disgraceful offense against our Constitution and government be the legacy of this President? Or will, somehow, someone get to the President and tell him that our people are hurting? It is not a little bit of pain.

And I know they can't understand why Federal workers are going to food banks. Then they should come on out to the food banks. I invite them to come join me at the food banks in my district where I have been going. You will meet lots of Federal workers and their families there, because in this economy there are a lot of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, and tomorrow, that is two paychecks that people have missed, and they have missed them in the course of not doing the jobs that America needs them to do.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank Ms. Pingree for yielding this time, and I just urge all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and the President to please let America get back to work, and to open the government immediately.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 43 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam 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

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

Madam Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 43, providing for consideration of H.R. 268, making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes.

The rule provides for consideration of the legislation under a structured rule. The rule makes in order 15 amendments from Members on both sides of the aisle. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. The rule also waives the requirement for two- thirds vote to consider a report from the Committee on Rules on the same day it is presented to the House with respect to any resolution reported through the legislative day of January 23, relating to a measure making or continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019.

Madam Speaker, I rise now in support of the rule for H.R. 268, our emergency disaster relief bill, to provide $12.14 billion in recovery and relief assistance for millions of Americans suffering from the damage caused by recent hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, flooding, earthquakes, and wildfires.

These national disasters follow decades of scientific warnings to Congress that accelerating climate change would bring us extreme weather events characterized by unprecedented ferocity and violence, and here we are in the middle of the global crisis of climate change dealing with profound natural catastrophes like these.

Last year, Hurricane Michael, the most intense hurricane ever to strike the Florida panhandle brought winds surpassing 125 miles per hour and gusts of up to 200 miles per hour, killing 45 people who were crushed and drowned by the hurricane, and inflicting $40 billion in economic damages, and $5 billion in insured losses.

In 2018, the people of California, who have lost 10 million acres of forest in the last decade to wildfires, experienced the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season in recorded history with more than 8,500 fires burning an area of 1,893,913 acres, the largest area of burned acreage ever recorded in a fire season in the United States of America.

An astonishing 7,100 structures burned to the ground. In July and August, it seemed like the entire State was ablaze with the worst damage taking place in northern California which was declared a disaster area. Millions of people in San Francisco and the bay area were forced to wear gas masks to go to school or to go to work.

In November, yet another round of wildfires visited massive destruction of life, limb, and property on the people of California. One fire, the so-called Camp fire, displaced tens of thousands of people and killed at least 86 men, women, and children, burning many of them to death in their cars or as they sought refuge and tried to flee from their cars and run down the road.

The fire, which lasted many days, annihilated more than 18,000 structures and buildings and destroyed the entire town of Paradise, turning it into an inferno, a hell on Earth. This was in our country.

The same kinds of astonishing events that destroyed entire communities in Florida and in California were experienced by people all over America last year: hurricane devastation in Puerto Rico, Texas, and the Carolinas; unprecedented flooding and drought all over America; and typhoons in the territories, a catalogue of climate-change intensified misery and suffering that the entire Congress should see as calling upon the decency and resources of the American people to address.

The $12 billion legislation the majority brings forward today in H.R. 268 will ensure that communities across the land can recover from these disasters with the resources that they need to rebuild.

The bill helps farmers suffering from crop and livestock losses, coastal communities rebuilding their infrastructure and preparing to weather future storms; dislocated workers, veterans, students, and other Americans displaced and uprooted by these catastrophes.

The bill invests in restoration of disaster-damaged forests. It sends aids to local communities to restore more than 250,000 acres of watershed. It funds restoration of rural communities. It offers $600 million to continue disaster nutrition benefits to the hard-hit people of Puerto Rico, still reeling from Hurricane Maria, and it allocates critical funding for social services, mental health, education, nutrition assistance, and infrastructure resiliency in communities across the land.

We will rebuild our transportation systems with this legislation. We will repair housing. We will repair businesses and public infrastructure. We will repair and reconstruct hurricane-damaged Veterans Administration and Department of Defense bases and facilities across the country.

But the majority is not stopping there. We are not just offering aid to States and local communities across the land to rebuild and renew. We are reopening the Government of the United States so we can actually send this aid, so we can offer the expert

technical assistance these communities need, and so we can use the full apparatus of our government, including the currently closed down Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard where our hardworking personnel are not being paid, to get America moving again

The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group of Governors from the 50 States called for an immediate reopening of the government that will allow for the release of $85 billion in Federal aid and loan assistance that is being held up because a third of the government has been shut down. That is the Governors of our States, the people closest to surveying the damage on the ground.

Indeed, by reopening the Government of the United States of America, we are not just helping to address the disasters that have befallen our people across the country; we are ending the manmade disaster of the government shutdown.

And when I say it is manmade, I don't mean to use archaic sexist language, Madam Speaker. I am trying to be precise. This is the shutdown that one man, President Donald Trump, gave us and proudly claimed as his own in the December 11 White House meeting when he said, ``I am proud to shut down the government, Chuck. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down,'' said the President of the United States. ``I'm not going to blame you for it.''

So far this shutdown that the President is proud to have delivered to his people has closed nine Federal departments: Department of State, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Treasury, HUD, and Department of Transportation.

It has caused 800,000 Federal workers to be furloughed or compelled to work with no pay at all. It has threatened public safety in national parks which are overflowing with garbage and backed up waste in the bathrooms. It has threatened the tax refunds of millions of Americans. It has threatened 38 million low-income Americans who depend on SNAP benefits for proper nutrition for their families, and it has unleashed profound chaos and anxiety in the land.

In my congressional district, tens of thousands of Federal workers have been denied pay; air traffic controllers, Coast Guard personnel, NIH researchers, scientists at NOAA. I have heard from scientists at the FDA who have been furloughed and prevented from working on the prevention and containment of E. coli, salmonella, and insect infestation of our food supply.

I have spoken to an Army veteran who has spent the rest of his career after leaving the Army as an air traffic controller who now must raid his own retirement plan and his daughter's 529 college plan with a 10 percent penalty in order to pay his mortgage.

I have spoken to several constituents who have been forced to pay their mortgages with credit cards or loans from other family members, and I have talked to constituents who have been forced to forego medical treatments because they can't balance their checkbooks, when they are ordered to work but receive a pay stub like many have emailed to me, showing zero net pay, zero gross pay.

Hundreds of thousands of people who work for private contractors and small businesses working with the government across America have been injured as well; many furloughed, laid off, or fired with no real promise of making their money back, unlike the Federal workers who at least, I hope, should be getting their money back because of legislation that the majority has brought forward.

But the 172,000 Federal workers in my State are losing $778 million every 2 weeks, and the State has already lost more than $60 million in taxes.

The economic reverberations are awful, and they are spreading.

Now, this shutdown is a brutal assault on the separation of powers and the Constitution of the United States:

It does not form a more perfect Union. It does not establish justice. It shuts the Justice Department down.

It does not ensure domestic tranquility. It defunds the Department of Homeland Security.

It does not provide for the common defense, but it robs our Coast Guard personnel of their paychecks.

It does not promote the general welfare, but it furloughs food inspectors.

It cheats civil servants out of their salaries; it promotes tax fraud by locking IRS agents out of their offices; and it idles environmental scientists, diplomats, air traffic controllers, and TSA agents who are calling in sick because they can't even afford to get to work now.

This policy is not in service of ``we, the people,'' and that is why every public opinion poll shows the American people overwhelmingly rejecting the Trump shutdown, this scandalous assault on the public good.

In America, we don't hold the government or the workforce or the people hostage over a policy dispute. That is an absolute betrayal of the separation of powers and how government is supposed to work in the United States of America.

Now, my good friends across the aisle should be confronting the shutdown with us. We are asking them to join us in getting the emergency aid to our people all across the land and in reopening the government.

I know it wasn't their idea, Madam Speaker. I know they were backed into this situation by President Trump and FOX News and Ann Coulter, whom the President apparently saw on TV and then changed his mind and decided to shut the government down.

But now, I am afraid that our friends across the aisle have become enablers of the President, and now they own a piece of the shutdown. The party of Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union with malice for none and charity for all, has become the party of Donald Trump, who shut down the government with charity for none and malice for all.

Let's put an end to it right now, Madam Speaker. In the age of climate change, we have no time left for these foolish and self- destructive games. We must act as first responders for the American people.

Our new majority in the House of Representatives is up to the task. We are ready to govern. We are ready to lead. Let's help our people recover from the natural disasters which have been exacerbated by climate change, and let's end the manmade disaster of the shutdown of our own government right now.

Americans know the truth of this situation. Let's act together to end the Trump shutdown, which the American people rightfully despise and deplore. Let's put the government back to work for the general welfare, starting with the millions of Americans still buffeted by the terrifying weather calamities of 2018.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), my friend, for his very thoughtful words and that kind welcome to the Rules Committee.

I have heard nothing but wonderful things about how he operates on the Rules Committee, and we are indeed fortunate to have him serving in this capacity. I really do look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.

And I admit that it has been a somewhat awkward process trying to reopen the government of the United States. This shutdown is unique for at least two reasons I can think of. One is it is already the longest shutdown in the history of the United States; and the second is that, when the shutdown began last year under the 115th Congress, it was the only time that the Congress adjourned during a shutdown.

So rather than stay and try to work it out, we were adjourned before recess, and the Congress went home, so it was left in the hands of the new majority and the new 116th Congress to try to get it going again, which is why, yes, it is the absolute first order of business for us to open up the Government of the United States.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Shalala), who is also a new and a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Washington State for his comments. I would urge him to stick with his original instinct to support the legislation.

He said that he finds lots of important stuff in it, aiding the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes and floods and so on. All of that is absolutely right. That is why we are voting for it. We urge him to vote for it, too.

He says that we are playing politics in a shameful way, that we are engaged in partisan politics, by adding a measure to reopen the Government of the United States that will allow us to get aid to all of these people and to allow all our workers to be paid.

What I consider shameful is holding the Government of the United States of America, the Federal workforce, private contractors, and the people hostage over a policy debate.

We have never seen anything like this before, and now it is the longest shutdown in history.

So let's reopen the government. And we are willing to debate anything you want, but we can't do it in a hostage-taking, ransom-type situation.

Since when did opening the Government of the United States become a poison pill? I just don't see that.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar).

Madam Speaker, the first thing I am afraid I need to point out is that certain of our friends on the other side of the aisle are experiencing a kind of a political speech impediment where they are unable to correctly pronounce the name of our party. We are the Democratic Party, not the Democrat Party.

I was reading a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt recently called ``Traitor to His Class,'' which was very interesting. He said:

If you don't want to call us the Democratic Party, call us

the democracy.

So those would be the two choices that would be the most suitable, at least from our side of the aisle.

The second thing I want to point out is this is a clean continuing resolution. We have not loaded it up with a bunch of partisan sweeteners or ideological ``gotcha'' resolutions.

This is a clean continuing resolution to get disaster assistance to our people, the people of the United States, and it opens up our government to make that assistance possible so we can end the manmade disaster of the shutdown.

So I think that it well suits those who are saying they both want to get the aid to Americans and they want the government of the United States to be reopened.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Mrs. Lee).

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

I continue to be baffled about why some of my colleagues think that opening the Government of the United States--our government--is a poison pill and something they can't support.

Look how far we have fallen, Madam Speaker. We are voting for billions of dollars in aid to the people of Florida, and the people of Texas and California and Puerto Rico, so we can deal with the mounting natural crises and emergencies around the country. We need to open the government to do it, and there are those who say that is too high a price. They want to get the aid to the people, but it is too high a price to reopen our own government.

We can't find an example of another democratic country where the chief executive has shut down his own government the way that President Trump has done in this case.

We know that he expresses a lot of admiration for Vladimir Putin in Russia and for Orban in Hungary and for Duterte in the Philippines and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who recently ordered out for the assassination of a journalist for The Washington Post.

Those are his friends. Those are the people he looks up to. So maybe he thinks this is a normal way of doing business.

Well, it is not in the United States of America. Let them close the government in Russia. Let them send the workforce in Hungary home. Let them put the civil servants in the Philippines at rest. Why don't they shut down the government of Saudi Arabia?

Why are they doing this to the people of the United States of America?

We are not playing games. He is playing a game with us. He is holding us hostage over his pet obsession, and the American people know it.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time I have remaining.

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

Madam Speaker, our beloved colleagues across the aisle have asked us to come back to the negotiating table and to compromise.

Madam Speaker, we have compromised. The bills that we started out passing were bills that were overwhelmingly or unanimously passed by the Republicans in committee or on the floor of the Senate, so we are passing their bills to reopen the government. The very first order of business is to reopen the government.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague for conceding the fairness of the amendment process that we have adopted here today, and I do hope that it will be the beginning of a new era in Congress where we can work together and bring in the best ideas from everybody.

Having said that, we still have a disagreement, and the disagreement is this: We brought forward four continuing resolutions that incorporated the language that came from Republicans in the Senate, and were voted out on a 92-6 basis, in order to pass it.

Now, my distinguished colleague says, well, maybe the Republicans in the House would have felt differently about that. Well, of course, they controlled the House in the last session, but they adjourned without us ever taking it up. They adjourned into Christmas break and into a shutdown.

We were left with this mess when we got into power. That is why our first order of business must be to reopen the Government of the United States. We have offered multiple continuing resolutions in order to do that. In fact, I think a dozen of my Republican colleagues have already voted for different CRs in order to keep the government going.

So when the gentleman kindly asks: ``Well, how can you expect us to do this?'' lots of Republicans understand the urgency of reopening the government.

One position says: We will reopen the government if you do what we want. Our position is: Let's reopen the government.

You see the difference there? We are not holding anybody hostage. There is no political ransom. We are not making any demands. We are saying: Let's pass this legislation that has overwhelming, if not unanimous, support to get disaster relief to our people, and let's reopen the government so we can get them the relief.

Instead, we get accused of playing political games. They call reopening the Government of the United States a poison pill. That has to be making some history in itself.

The word ``emergency'' has been bandied about a lot, Madam Speaker, over

the last few weeks. The President even threatened to invoke emergency powers that he thinks he has in order to impose his fantasy wall on the government when it is very clear that he didn't get it through 2 years of a Republican-controlled House and Senate. And he is not getting it through this Congress, and he didn't get the funding from the Mexican Government, which was what the original promise was.

So now he wants to see if he can find emergency powers to do it, but he has delayed the emergency. Think about that. It is as if you saw an emergency in your neighborhood, and you say: Well, instead of calling the police or the fire department, I will wait a few weeks to do it.

That is not a real emergency. What is a real emergency?

Well, climate change is obviously a real emergency. The entire weight of scientific evidence tells us that is a real emergency.

The government shutdown is an emergency for more than 800,000 Federal employees who now have to explain to their kids why they don't have a paycheck and why they are borrowing from their own retirement funds or from the kids' college funds.

Where people can't get needed medical care, they are not able to pay for medically indicated conditions they have because they don't have the money to do it, that is an emergency.

Hurricanes Florence and Michael, those are emergencies, and that is why we want to get aid to the people there.

That is what this legislation is all about.

The California wildfires, which killed dozens of Americans, that is an emergency. That is why we are trying to get aid out to the people of California.

But a legislative debate over the proper means of homeland security when we spent more than $9 billion on homeland security over the last decade, and our side is fighting for the best innovations, the best technology to invest in border security? That is not an emergency. That is a legislative debate that we can have.

So we go back to the basic point: Let's get aid to our people, from Puerto Rico to North Carolina and South Carolina, from Florida to Texas. That is what this bill does. It gets aid to our people. It reopens the Government of the United States. It puts us back in the business of promoting the general welfare.

That is what we have been sent here to do, to promote justice and the general welfare and domestic tranquility, not shut down the government. Let's open it up, and let's get aid to the people of the United States of America. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman very much.

Madam Speaker, 800,000 American workers, 800,000 workers in our Federal workforce, have either been sent home and furloughed with no check or told to report to work with no check, with no payment.

I have got air traffic controllers living in my district, Madam Speaker, who have had to take money out of their kids' 529 college funds. They have had to take money out of their own retirement funds in order to pay their family bills, and there is a 10 percent penalty for doing that. Who is going to pay them back the 10 percent? Is the President of the United States going to do that?

What about my constituents? I have tens of thousands of Federal workers. What about my constituents who are being forced to put their mortgage on a credit card this month? Who is going to pay them back?

And what about the dishonor and the humiliation brought on our government by this?

The President of the United States didn't do this to hundreds of thousands of workers in Putin's Russia or in Orban's Hungary or in Duterte's Philippines. This is our people that he did this to.

These are our workers, who he sent home with no paycheck. People are texting me. They are emailing me their paystubs today, which say zero dollars gross, zero dollars net, after having worked 40 or 50 hours this week.

I have scientists in my district who are working on preventing outbreaks of E. coli contamination, salmonella, insect infestation of our food supply, and they have been told not to go to work.

Madam Speaker, this is an outright outrage and a scandal. At the very least, we can pass, on a unanimous, bipartisan basis, this legislation to try to repair the damage by saying that every Federal worker will get back every penny that he or she is owed by the United States Government.

We need to make sure that, if this ever happens again, if the President ever holds the Federal workforce, the government, and the people hostage again, that the Federal workforce will not be the ones who have to pay for it. We should pass this immediately, and we should reopen the government immediately.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to join my colleagues in considering H.R. 7293, which will designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 770 Ayrault Road in Fairport, New York, as the Louise and Bob Slaughter Post Office.

Representative Slaughter was a pioneering, ebullient, and groundbreaking Member of this body whose energetic service on the Rules Committee changed the dynamics and the culture of the House of Representatives.

She served here for 31 years, was the first woman ever to chair the Rules Committee, and coauthored the landmark Violence Against Women Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle) for a further brief statement on her remarkable life and career.

Mr. Speaker, as the former majority leader of the New York Assembly, Representative Morelle is a fitting and worthy successor to Representative Slaughter, whom we all miss. I thank the gentleman for bringing this legislation forward.

I urge passage of H.R. 7293.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers at this time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The Foundations of Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, as amended, would establish a framework to support greater access and use of government data.

I thank Speaker Ryan, Senator Murray, and Representative Kilmer for their constructive and collaborative bipartisan work on this issue.

The goal of the bill is to ensure that Congress and the executive branch are able to make important policy decisions based on evidence, facts, and science.

We are in very strong support of this legislation.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I support the bill, which is designed to promote the transparency and accountability of Federal agencies. It would require agencies to include in their budget justifications to Congress a summary of the recommendations made by GAO or the agency's inspector general in the prior year.

Agencies also would be required to explain what steps they are actually taking to address these recommendations by GAO or their IG or, if they disagree with those recommendations, why.

The GAO and inspectors general provide critical oversight of the executive branch of government and provide Congress with invaluable assistance in helping hold any Presidential administration accountable for its actions and policies.

Knowing what agencies are doing or not doing to address GAO and IG recommendations will definitely assist us in Congress in conducting our constitutional oversight responsibilities.

This is a commonsense measure that all Members should support. I am delighted to advance it on a bipartisan basis.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in support of the Federal Personal Property Management Act, which would improve the accountability of unneeded equipment, furniture, and information technology resources at Federal agencies.

It may be an appropriate time for us to take up this bill, given all the furniture strewn throughout the floors of the House of Representatives.

The GAO recently found that most agencies do not have procedures in place to identify unneeded personal property on a regular basis. The GSA has issued regulations establishing a governmentwide excess property disposal process, but it lacks the authority to tell agencies how or when to identify excess property. As a result, agencies retain unneeded property that could be used elsewhere in the Federal Government, at State or local governments, or in the private sector.

The report also found there is a wide variation in how Federal agencies classify according to value, which makes it difficult to measure the total value of the government's personal property holdings.

The Federal Personal Property Management Act would direct Federal agencies to assess and inventory more valuable property assets once a year and assets of lower value on a regular basis, according to guidance issued by GSA.

Requiring agencies to regularly inventory their excess property should spur agencies to declare excess property more often, allowing for its disposal.

The bill also would give the GSA authority to establish a uniform standard for how agencies assess their most valuable property, allowing for a better understanding and use of its value.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I support S. 3191, the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act, which represents an important step toward finally solving more than 100 unresolved court cases in the civil rights field.

The bill will establish a new civil rights cold case records collection and review board, so the public can review records related to these unsolved cases, with appropriate security and privacy safeguards.

The bill will allow the expertise of outside investigators to help bring justice to the families and descendants and victims of these crimes.

The bill also will provide a role for Congress in the appointments to this review board, to ensure proper expertise and accountability in the process.

It is imperative that Congress appropriate sufficient funding to the National Archives and other agencies to carry out the important mission of this legislation. I urge all Members to support this bill and future funding measures for this endeavor.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Awareness Month and the outstanding work of the Pulmonary Hypertension Association in the fight against this rare and debilitating disease.

PH is a type of high blood pressure that occurs in the arteries of the lungs. It reflects the pressure the heart must apply to pump blood from the heart through the arteries of the lungs. As with a tangled hose, pressure builds up and backs up, forcing the heart to work harder and less oxygen to reach the body. PH symptoms generally include fatigue, dizziness, and shortness of breath with the severity of the disease correlating with its progression. If left undiagnosed or untreated it can lead to heat failure and death.

When individuals are diagnosed with PH quickly and begin appropriate therapy, their prognosis and life-expectancy improve dramatically. However, it currently takes an average of 2.5 years to receive a diagnosis and three quarters of patients have severe PH when they are finally diagnosed. Without treatment, historical studies have shown a mean survival time of 2.8 years after diagnosis for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Patients with advanced PH cannot benefit as greatly from available therapies and often face dramatic and costly medical interventions, including 24-hour IV infused medication, increased risk for hospitalization and in some cases heart-lung transplantation.

I am proud to represent the Pulmonary Hypertension Association, which is headquartered in my district in Silver Spring, Maryland. The Association is dedicated to extending and improving the life of those affected by PH and was the first organization in the world dedicated to providing comprehensive PH patient and caregiver support, medical education, specialty care services that improve patients' quality of life, and research funding. Thanks in large part to the Pulmonary Hypertension Association's advocacy for continued investment in medical research and sustained scientific progress, there are 14 Food and Drug Administration-approved targeted treatment options for two forms of PH. Additionally, their efforts to establish a PH Program at the CDC focusing on education, awareness, and epidemiology activities that promote early and accurate diagnosis and quality care for PH are to be commended.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to join me in recognizing November as Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month and to continue supporting federal activities that improve the lives of those with PH, including research programs at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call for the immediate release of Abdul Shakoor, a prisoner of conscience currently incarcerated in Pakistan, and a man who has been persecuted for his belief in the Ahmadiyya Muslim faith. Mr. Shakoor is an 82-year old who manages an optician's store and bookshop in the main bazaar of Rabwah in Punjab province. Rabwah is the de facto headquarters of Pakistan's Ahmadiyya Muslim community, known as Ahmadis.

Mr. Shakoor is a beloved figure in Rabwah where he is known as a pillar of the community, a leader, a conciliator, and peacemaker. He is referred to by all as ``Brother'' Shakoor.

In 1997, Pakistan passed the Anti-Terrorism Act, which provided for a broad definition of terrorism and created special Anti-Terrorism Courts to try individuals accused of violating the law. In the 20 years since it became law, the Anti-Terrorism Act has been increasingly used as a cudgel to persecute religious minorities within Pakistan, with a specific malicious focus trained on Ahmadi Muslims. This is because Pakistan's Constitution declares members of the Ahmadiyya faith as non- Muslims, and Pakistan's Penal Code criminalizes their existence for ``posing as Muslim,'' subjecting them to three years imprisonment and potential capital punishment. Thus, Ahmadis are legally rendered heretical and thus illegal in Pakistan because Ahmadi Muslims believe that the founder of their faith, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was divinely appointed as the promised Mahdi and Messiah.

On December 2nd and 9th of 2015, Brother Shakoor's bookshop was raided by the Counter Terrorism Department of the Punjab police and the counterterrorism focused Elite Force. He and his assistant, Mazhar Abbas, a Shia Muslim, were arrested for the crime of distributing Ahmadiyya commentaries on the Qur'an. Brother Shakoor was charged with violating both the Anti-Terrorism Act, for ``disseminating any material to incite hatred,'' and the Pakistani Penal code for committing acts or speech that insult a religion or defile the Qur'an or the Prophet Muhammad.

Brother Shakoor was brought to trial within a month before the Anti- Terrorism Court in Faisalabad, Punjab. The only witnesses at the trial were the officers who raided his bookstore who entered into evidence a letter supposedly recovered during the December 9 raid. The letter, purportedly from the Ahmadiyya Director of Public Affairs, notified Brother Shakoor that some Ahmadiyya literature had been banned and he should neither display nor sell it. However, the literature cited in the letter, and for which Brother Shakoor was prosecuted, was not banned until January 20, 2016, after the trial had concluded. Obviously, religious literature cannot be banned under international human rights law in any case.

Brother Shakoor contended at trial, and maintains the position, that while he was in possession of the literature, he did not distribute it. Yet, the anti-terrorism court Judge Raja Parvaiz Akhtar announced Brother Shakoor's conviction under the Anti-Terrorism Act and Sentenced him to eight years imprisonment for his alleged crimes, dealing a terrible blow to the local Ahmadiyya community. The shop assistant, Mr. Abbas, was convicted under the Anti-Terrorism Act as well and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Since his conviction, Brother Shakoor has appealed the verdict and petitioned for bail on appeal to the Lahore High Court, but he has remained in jail. The case has been listed on the Lahore High Court's daily docket on several occasions, but it has been repeatedly postponed. The last postponed hearing date is believed to have been June 22, 2017, and the matter has not been noticed since to the best of our knowledge. Brother Shakoor remains in prison and is suffering from medical conditions which we cannot say are being attended to, including hernia and severe weakness owing to old age. For example, the distance within the jail facility between the daily meeting point and his cell is very long, and so he needs to be transported with help from a warden because he cannot even make that basic walk by foot.

When anti-terrorism statutes are used to persecute practitioners of minority religious communities who have done nothing but observe their faith, they are obviously illegitimate instruments of tyranny and threaten public support for legitimate anti-terrorism policies. Brother Shakoor's imprisonment is a scandalous abuse of an anti-terror law and demands international condemnation. He should be freed immediately.

As the world's first constitutional democracy, America must defend the freedoms of speech, expression, and religion against state persecution everywhere. So today, I ask my colleagues to join me in standing with Brother Shakoor and calling for his release, as well as that of Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in solidarity with members of minority groups in India who are facing persecution because of their faith or class standing. I recently met with Teesta Setalvad, a prominent civil rights lawyer in India. She updated me on the increasing religious violence being committed by extremist groups against religious minority communities in India including Muslims, Christians, and Hindu Dalits, also known as ``untouchables.'' Although this violence is not new, the United States Commission on International Religious freedom has noted a substantial deterioration in conditions for minority groups since 2014, when the ruling Bharati Jayanti Party (BJP) rose to power on a Hindu nationalist political platform.

Intensifying religious-based violence has swept 10-of-29 states in India, including Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, which are controlled by the BJP, and which have begun enforcing anti-cow slaughtering and anti- conversion laws. While attacks on minorities are not always directly instigated by the government, a cloak of impunity covers mob violence that targets these communities. Human rights groups have criticized the pervasive police and judicial bias apparently backed by BJP and affiliated groups such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP).

The aggressive enforcement of anti-cow slaughter laws is being used to persecute and intimidate Muslims and Dalits whose families have engaged in dairy, leather or beef trades for generations. Mob violence is common against people suspected of harming cows. In 2017, there were at least 10 public lynchings conducted by ``cow protection'' mobs. One

such attack occurred when a 55-year-old man, Pehlu Khan, was set-upon by a mob and beaten to death while transporting a cow home that he had bought at a fair.

Most appalling are the cases of sexual assault against minorities for political purposes. In January of this year, eight Hindu men kidnapped and raped an eight-year-old Muslim girl in a Hindu temple before killing her. Her murder served the purpose of driving her nomadic community from the area. After the perpetrators were arrested, a mob of Hindu lawyers surrounded the police in an attempt to bar them from entering the courthouse to file charges against the perpetrators.

Christians, like Muslims, have been targeted because of the paranoid suspicion that proselytizing could convert people away from Hinduism. Nuns and members of the clergy have suffered attacks for preaching Christian values. Just last month, the home of a pastor in Manipur was burned down and Chadarajupalli Subbaravamma, a woman in her mid-60s in Andhra Pradesh, reportedly was murdered because she converted to Christianity 10 years ago.

Likewise, Dalits have been victim to structural violence. They face everyday humiliation as they are blocked from areas of worship and are denied the most basic of human rights, such as access to clean water. Additionally, attacks and sexual assaults against women of the Dalit community frequently go unreported or uninvestigated. In Kerala state, a woman was recently doused in gasoline and set on fire by her estranged husband in the view of village council members. No one attempted to help the woman, and her husband managed to flee the scene.

When individuals of minority groups resist violence and oppression, they are met with greater brutality. But liberal democracies stand up for all religious minorities who are fighting for the right to practice their beliefs in the face of vigilante violence and persecution from the majority.

It is disheartening that communal violence against religious minorities is on the rise in India, a great ally of the United States and the largest democracy on earth. We must stand up and speak out against these abhorrent attacks on religious minorities. India's government can no longer look the other way in the face of accelerating violence against religious minorities and the Dalit community.

Today, I ask my colleagues to join me in standing with civil rights leaders such as Teesta Setalvad in urging India to recognize the humanity of all its people and put an end to these heinous crimes.