Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I thank Mr. Connolly for his invitation, and I am delighted to be here to speak out against H.R. 4182, the so-called Ensuring a Qualified Civil Service Act.

The first complaint I have got to lodge about it is the process by which it is taking place. This is a radical change in the civil service hiring policy and in the workplace without a hearing. I know we have grown accustomed to that, but let's just focus on the fact that here we are in the Nation's Capital and we have got all of the employees, managers, and supervisors, and everybody here, and we didn't even have a hearing to discuss why this might be necessary.

Then it is passed on a completely party-line vote in the Oversight Committee, which leads to the suspicion that this has nothing to do with the integrity of the civil service or the excellence of the civil service, the things that we should be thinking about, but it has to do, in fact, with a partisan mission.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, I tremble to say here in front of the whole body, but I don't believe that it was. I stand to be corrected by my colleagues if there was a hearing.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, not to my knowledge. I am used to that coming out of the State legislature, where we have endless hearings that go on into 2 a.m. in the morning or they go on for several days. But there were no hearings, there was no evidence, there was no expert testimony.

I couldn't figure out what was behind it. Then I realized that there is this effort to demoralize the Federal workforce and there was this effort to create a kind of political control over what is going on in the Federal workplace.

Mr. Chair, I am baffled and puzzled by the way in which this measure came about. And I am really scared about what it means for all of our constituents who make the sacrifice of going to work for the Federal Government to serve the American people, because they are going into the workplace and I think most people are used to a probationary period of 3 months or 6 months. We had a year. Now we are doubling it to 2 years, which means that people are living in fear at a time when there is an administration that is intimidating people for doing their jobs; for example, for doing research about climate change and trying to deal with environmental problems. They are facing reprisals in the workplace.

This is a bill that deserves to go down in defeat. Anybody who represents Federal workers, I think, should stand up strongly against it. It should be returned to sender and let's have some real hearings and some real analysis.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Connolly, and I want to salute him as a really ardent champion for those of your constituents who work in the Federal Government. In Maryland, as in Virginia, we have lots of them, but it is not just there.

Eighty-five percent of the Federal workforce lives outside of the Washington/Maryland/Virginia area: Kentucky and California and South Carolina and Texas. This would apply to all new employees. Millions of new people coming into the workforce would be added, doubling the probationary period. Imagine if you were trying to hire for your small business and you had to tell people that they were going to be on probation for 2 years basically, with none of the rights that you would have vested as if you had really gotten hired and been part of the workforce.

I want to say, they are willing, apparently, in this bill, to give people a whole extra year on probation. They are not wanting to wait even 1 year or a half a year, maybe, for the GAO to do a proper study so we can use evidence-based policymaking, as the gentleman says. That is the very least that we can do.

The good gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Comer) said that there was a study done 10 years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here this evening on behalf of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, which is in very strong opposition to both the House and Senate versions of the tax scam that is speeding through the United States Congress this week. We have several members who would like to participate in this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline). He is a passionate representative of the people of Rhode Island and a real champion of the American middle class.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Cicilline for his strong leadership for the people of Rhode Island and his dedication to the middle class of America, which is besieged and under attack today in Washington, D.C. You know, the former Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, came and said that this is the worst piece of tax legislation he had seen ever in the history of the United States of America.

Now, the good news is that the American people have taken a look, and they don't like it. By more than 2-1, the American people in public opinion polls are rejecting this plan. The Quinnipiac poll found that American voters are rejecting the plan by more than 2-1, with 52 percent disapproving and only 25 percent approving. Every day, the more people find out about it, the more that they hate the guts of this bill and what is inside of the tax plan.

We are in a situation of ``beat the clock'' now. Can we get the information out to the people, Mr. Speaker, about what is in this bill before it is rammed through the United States Congress?

So let's start with this: 82 million middle class households are going to see their taxes go up over the next decade. They are going to completely obliterate the State and local tax deduction, which States like mine, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Illinois, are going to be killed by, because if you make investments in your educational infrastructure, if you make investments in the transportation infrastructure, now they want to abolish the State and local tax deduction and make you pay twice for the same money that you have earned, while driving pressure down on the States to eliminate investment in the people who live in the States.

Well, so they are going to raise taxes on millions of middle class families. Why? So they can slash taxes for the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. They want to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent at a time of record corporate profits in America.

They say that everybody is going to get wage increases by that. But we have already got record corporate profits, and we have seen wage growth be stagnant under the policies that are being propounded by the GOP in Congress.

If you want to increase people's wages, increase the minimum wage. Have some courage. Have some honesty. Let's increase the minimum wage. Let's give America a raise. That will work, not just showering billions of dollars more on the richest people in the country.

By the way, it is not just the richest people in the country. One- third of corporate ownership in America goes to foreign investors. That is right. So if we decide to give $1\1/2\ trillion to investors in America with a corporate tax break, one-third of that money is going to leave America immediately and go to China or Saudi Arabia or wherever the rich corporate investors are.

The purpose of this bill isn't even just to enrich the wealthiest people in America. It is to enrich the wealthiest people on Earth because the money is going to be flying overseas as soon as we institute this corporate tax cut.

Then they build up record deficits: $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in deficits on the House and Senate plans--which are twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber--$1.5 trillion to $2 trillion that the children, the grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren of the middle class are going to be paying back for decades so there can be a party on Wall Street; so there can be a party among the 1 percent; so Donald Trump's family, according to The New York Times, can collect up to $1 billion in tax relief.

How are they doing it?

Well, for example, they want to abolish the estate tax, which right now applies only to two of the richest 1,000 families in America. You take 1,000 families, only two of them are even paying the estate tax because it applies only to the wealthiest people in the country. They want to abolish that; totally in contradiction to the design of the Founders of America who did not want to see the transmission of millions, much less hundreds of millions, much less billions of dollars from one generation to the next because they understood that the intergenerational transmission of that kind of wealth is a threat to democracy.

At a certain point, people have enough houses, they have enough yachts, they have enough helicopters.

And now what do they want to buy?

They want to buy a governorship. They want to buy a Senate seat. They want to buy a whole institution like the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate.

That is not democracy, and the Founders knew it. That is plutocracy.

So the radical economic inequality, which they want to cement into place with this tax bill, is a direct threat to the Democratic values of country, the Democratic values of the Founders of America.

They want to eliminate the student loan interest deduction and lifetime learning credits, a direct assault on middle class upward mobility. They want to make it much more expensive for young people to go to college and then to pay their loans back.

They want to eliminate the medical expense deduction, which millions of families have used in order to take care of a loved one who has a serious long-term illness or is in long-term care. They just want to get rid of the medical expense deduction. You should read the letters and the emails that I am getting from families that are saying: ``This will bankrupt us.''

Right now, under the medical expense deduction, if you are spending more than 10 percent of your income on medical expenses, you can start to deduct it. They want to get rid of that.

Oh, guess who else that hits as collateral damage in the war against the middle class.

Families with children with special needs. Right now, families with children with special needs can go to a private school and they can deduct the tuition and expenses of that education as part of the medical expense deduction.

Well, the GOP wants to get rid of that, too, because I suppose life is just not hard enough on families in America who have kids with autism or kids with muscular dystrophy or kids who face any other manner of physical or neurological or mental or emotional problems.

We should be on the side of the families who are struggling with special needs children. We should be on their side. We should be on the side of the State and local governments that are trying heroically to address it. Instead, this legislation will pull the rug out from beneath families with special needs.

They want to impose dramatic new limits on the mortgage interest deduction, which, again, has been essential for the middle class to be able to partake of homeownership, which has been so much a part of building the middle class in our country.

Now, because the public is rebelling against this terrible tax plan the way the public rebelled against their terrible ACA repeal plan, which would have stripped 30 million Americans of their healthcare--by the way, the Senate plan now has smuggled into it a provision which would go back to the discredited ACA repeal plan by trying to throw millions of people off of their healthcare by overturning the individual mandate.

Well, the public has figured this out, and, here, in Washington, it is a race against the clock.

Will the tidal wave of public opinion reach Washington in time to stop them from passing a special interest tax scam, which appeals only to the top 1 percent of the country? Or will they be able to get it through in time?

But I appeal to my colleagues across the aisle, I beseech them, and I beg them to revisit the whole thing. This is not how we accomplish successful tax policy in the United States of America.

We did it in 1986. The Democrats and Republicans came together to do it.

You know how we did it?

With more than 2\1/2\ years of hearings, discussions, policy debates, town hall meetings all over America. We invited the best ideas to come from all sides, and it passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives. It passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate. The tax reform proposal, at the end, had been vetted and debated so much, everybody had contributed to it, it was so uncontroversial that it passed the House on a voice vote overwhelmingly, maybe unanimously. Nobody even asked for a rollcall vote. The Senate passed its version by a near unanimous vote of 97-3.

You see, that is how you do real tax reform. You bring the parties together to do it. There were more than 250 witnesses who appeared in the House Ways and Means Committee, who appeared before the Senate Finance Committee. Sure, there were some knockdown, drag-out fights; sure, the Democrats and Republicans were fighting like cats and dogs, but we were committed to coming up with a consensus product that would work for America, and we did it.

What we are seeing in Washington today is the exact opposite. The determination is to pass a completely partisan piece of legislation at all costs, with a very narrow majority running over the minority completely, and it is not going to work because America is a democracy. Taxation is the way that we support our government; the projects that we develop together. In taxation of all fields, we need to make sure that we are getting the best ideas from all sides. You can't ram it through and you can't crush the opposition.

What we are going to end up with--if they do manage to power this through with every manner of a backroom deal and a sweetheart contract and special interest strings attached, if they do manage to get it through, what you are going to have is a plan that is going to bankrupt the middle class the way that Donald Trump bankrupted four or five businesses.

The difference is that if you bankrupt a hotel, if you bankrupt a casino, if you bankrupt a corporation, well, there were laws that allow you to get back on your feet, and Donald Trump used them handsomely. He got back on his feet through the bankruptcy laws.

But what happens if you bankrupt the middle class of America? What happens if you bankrupt the government of the United States?

This is irresponsible. This is not responsible governance that is taking place, to be advancing a plan that a recent Secretary of the Treasury has called the worst tax plan ever ventured forth in the history of the United States of America.

We asked the majority in the House and the Senate to pull the plug on this terrible assault on the middle class, pull the plug on the tax scam, and let's go back to the hearing rooms and let's have some real hearings, let's have experts come in and let's look at how to relieve the tax burden on hardworking middle class taxpayers, relieve the tax burden on families that have special needs children, relieve the tax burden on people struggling to go to college and graduate school.

Why don't we try to bolster and strengthen the charitable sector and colleges and universities and schools across the land instead of trying to undermine them in order to occasion a dramatic shift of income in wealth up the ladder in the country?

Let's get back to work together, because if you are able to muscle this plan through the House and the Senate using every trick in the book except for negotiation and compromise and cooperation, it will be a disaster for the American people.

It will come back not only to haunt the political careers of people who assented to it and participated in it, but it will come back to haunt the entire country because the deficits and the debt will be out of control. We know that from every nonpartisan budget estimate and economist that has looked at it, every single one across the spectrum. Even the ones who are using the GOP's preferred method of dynamic scoring are saying it is going to be hell in terms of deficits and in terms of the debt.

So we are going to end up having to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That is what they are going to target next.

Whatever happened to the budget hawks? Are they an extinct species now? They are certainly an endangered species. Or have they just become budget ostriches?

They are hiding their heads in the sand while this highway robbery takes place in the Halls of Congress. Then they will come back next year, and they will say: Oh, look at these terrible deficits; we have got to cut Social Security; we have got to cut Medicare; we have got to cut Medicaid.

Now, suddenly, we are reborn as budget hawks again. We are born-again budget hawks. We can expect that to happen.

In the meantime, economic inequality in the country will continue to deepen and spread, and economic desperation will spread. We don't need to do this, Mr. Speaker, we do not need to do this. We are at a time of record corporate profits; record corporate prosperity. Wall Street has never been riding higher than it is now.

Why do we need to cut corporate taxes from 35 to 20 percent? Why do we need to start exporting more jobs abroad by instituting this new territoriality principle for taxes? A very fancy name that they assigned to it, do you know what it means? It means that if a business person is going to set up a factory on Main Street America with 1,000 jobs, they are going to pay full taxes on their business; but if they set it up in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Mexico, or Switzerland, or the Cayman Islands, they are going to pay zero on it because it is not made in the United States. That is in this bill.

Now, they say they are going to recapture some of the money if it gets really obscene, but why should we have that principle at all now? In fact, the law today is compromised enough. It says that if they relocate their businesses abroad, they don't pay taxes until the profits are repatriated--until the profits come back. Now, all of it is on paper. The companies haven't really moved anyplace. That is dubious enough as it is.

They want to make the current system worse. They want to say that if you set up your business abroad, if you ship it overseas, either really or on paper--like to the Cayman Islands, or something like that--you escape taxation completely. Maybe we will be able to recapture a little bit of it later through some accounting tricks, but basically this is a massive invitation to corporate America to outsource jobs overseas--to ship our jobs overseas.

Now, I know the President of the United States is not much of a policy wonk. I am not sure if they have apprised him of this provision yet.

Mr. Speaker, I hope someone who is in touch with the President of the United States gets in touch with him and tells him that his campaign promise to put America first--promise to put American jobs first--and the tax plan that he is about to append his name to, if this actually happens, will be responsible for outsourcing and offshoring millions of American jobs, and profits, and taxes. That is built into this legislation, with a lot of other nasty surprises that surface every single day, as we try to figure out what is happening on this speeding train of the tax plan.

This process has nothing to do with representative democracy; it has nothing to do with integrity in the work of the people's representatives.

So, we ask our colleagues: Let's take a breather. The American people don't like what they see. They are rejecting it by more than 2 to 1 in all of the polls.

I have spoken to my colleagues across the aisle, who are getting very nervous about their emails, and their letters, and their calls right now, just like they got very nervous about the ACA repeal--which seemed like a great idea, until they had a majority in Congress--and then they realized that they were going to throw millions of people to the streets.

Now it is a question of whether or not you want to outsource and offshore millions of jobs, whether you want to drive a $1.5 trillion or $2 trillion hole in the American deficit and in our economy, and whether you want to, basically, loot the middle class for the purposes of a big payday on Wall Street, and among foreign investors from Hong Kong to Saudi Arabia?

Well, that is the question. That is the choice that faces America this week, Mr. Speaker. That is what we are looking at. And who are we as a people? And do we have some sense--some semblance even--of community such that the GOP would want to try to get even 10 votes or 15 votes from the Democrats? No. All of the Democrats are opposing it.

Fortunately, 13 Republicans have crossed the aisle to say that they cannot stomach what they are seeing in this bill. We understand that there may be more coming this week, who are saying that they simply cannot tolerate what is taking place with this legislation.

But, as always, Mr. Speaker, this is a democracy that we are aspiring to be, not a plutocracy, not a theocracy, not a family government, not a royal government, but a democracy, which means that we place all of our faith and hope in the people to speak up, to talk to their representatives, to get in touch with them, and to ask them to read the fine print, so that we are not voting for a tax scam, instead of a tax bill.

All of the American people have a responsibility to get in touch with their legislators, Mr. Speaker, to ask: What is in the bill, and how is it going to affect us and the more than 80 million middle class families, who are going to end up seeing a tax hike over the next decade? And how is it going to affect people who take the State and local tax deduction and people who use the medical expense deduction for their families? And how is it going to affect people who have graduated from college and now are struggling to buy a house, or to get an apartment, or to move out of their parents' basement? And how is it going to affect them when the deduction for college student loan interest is abolished?

We need to slow down. We need to examine the priorities and the values that are built into this bill and see whether they actually square with the values, the beliefs, the priorities of the American people, and the needs of the American people.

We think this legislation is way off, Mr. Speaker. We ask the GOP majority to consider the unanimous opposition of the democratic block in Congress; we ask them to consider the public opinion polls, which show the American people rejecting the details of this bill by more than 2 to 1; and we ask

them to start over. Let's do it the way Congress did it back in 1986, when Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan got together, and the Democrats and Republicans talked about it, fought about it, and debated it. But they came up with a plan that, in the end, the vast majority of Congress and the vast majority of the people could support.

Let's not walk the plank for the 1 percent here. We know that there are some tiny interests in America that want to see this pass. Let's not walk the plank in Congress for a bill that reflects the interests of only the tiniest group of people. Let's do the job imagined by that great Republican President, who served in this body, proudly, from Illinois, in the House of Representatives: Abraham Lincoln, who spoke of ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.'' That is the part of that great triad that we will be betraying if we pass this bill, because it is not for the people, it is for the 1 percent.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, December 1, 2017, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member of the House Administration Committee for yielding and for his leadership. I also want to salute Ms. Speier and Chairman Harper for their work, too.

I rise in strong support of H. Res. 630, which requires all Members, staffers, and interns to undergo annual antiharassment and antidiscrimination training to impress upon all of us our individual responsibilities and rights as they relate to sexual harassment.

It would also require the posting of a statement in all of our Hill offices, and also in our district offices, setting forth what the rights and protections are of our employees so they know. This is how we got rid of minimum wage violations and violations of overtime protections in America, and this is how we will eliminate sexual harassment here on Capitol Hill.

From coast to coast, America is in an uproar over sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace. From Capitol Hill to the White House, from the offices of FOX News in New York to the studios of Hollywood, from Washington to Alabama, high officials and media luminaries are learning that sexual harassment really is against the law and that it is a terrible offense against people lower down the hierarchy in the workplace who are just trying to do their jobs, make a living, support their families, and develop their careers. This is America, and they have a right to equal opportunity without being harassed, grabbed, imposed upon, and threatened in the workplace.

As the people's Representatives, we have an obligation to lead not just by legislation, but by example. We must have comprehensive training for everyone who has the honor of coming to work here in the House of Representatives.

The good news is that a paradigm shift is taking place in America. Women everywhere are bravely speaking out against conduct that prior generations were forced to accept as business as usual. It will no longer be safe--and it should no longer be safe--for men to sexually harass women in the workplace.

We have experienced dramatic cultural shifts like this before in America and in Congress. For many decades, Members of Congress could convert money from their campaign funds to personal use. Then we got rid of it, and then it became unthinkable.

Similarly, there was a time when lobbyists could wine and dine legislators. We got rid of it and we moved beyond it. I am glad we are moving into an era of the harassment-free workplace on Capitol Hill.

Madam Speaker, as my friends across the aisle prepare their statistics about my congressional district where 500 people rallied against the tax plan this last weekend, I want to invite them to come to my district and to debate me and several other members of our caucus. I am happy to come to the gentleman's district and debate it, too, because the American people should be able to be part of this decision.

When the majority voted to throw 30 million Americans off of their health insurance plans, they went over to the White House where they celebrated like it was Mardi Gras, the Super Bowl, and Herbert Hoover's birthday all put together. When millions of middle class Americans rebelled and defeated that monstrosity of a bill, Donald Trump pointed at them and said that they had all voted for a mean bill; and he was right.

Now like lambs to the slaughter, they are about to vote for another mean bill, a tax scam written by corporate lobbyists in the dark of night

now moving through Congress at the speed of light.

While our poor colleagues grimly walk the plank for the billionaires, Wall Street tycoons, and the Trump Cabinet, who are getting ready to laugh all the way to the bank when middle class Americans rebel again this week, next week, and the week after that, and this tax scam bites the dust, President Trump can turn around again and call this monstrosity not only mean, but greedy.

This mean and greedy tax scam puts $1.5 trillion on America's credit card so the sons and daughters of the middle class can pay the rest of their lives for a gigantic corporate tax cut in a period of record corporate profits.

One-third of the windfall raining down on corporate investors will go abroad because more than one-third of corporate wealth is owned by foreign investors. That is more than $500 billion that goes not even to our own rich people but to Saudi Arabia, China, and other foreign investor havens, and it will not go to Medicare or Medicaid or other public purposes at home.

Then they move to the so-called territorial tax system so that corporate profits moved abroad will escape our normal system, giving incentive to record job flight. Somebody tell Donald Trump about this because this tax scam puts foreign jobs first.

In the meantime, Madam Speaker, 34 million middle class Americans get hit with a tax increase. Good-bye to the healthcare deduction. Good-bye to the college loan interest deduction. Farewell to a meaningful State and local tax deduction--oh, and farewell to the estate tax which applies only to billionaires and the richest millionaires in the country, 2 out of 1,000 families. Where is the democracy? Where is the legislative process?

When we had a bipartisan bill in 1986, we took more than 2 years. It passed with overwhelming support. Now this tax scam has had no hearings, no experts, and no citizen testimony. What a scandal it is. We do need tax reform, but we don't need a corporate tax scam imposed against the middle class.

Mr. Speaker, what is unfolding in Yemen today is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. The war in Yemen has already claimed more than 10,000 civilian lives, according to the U.N.

With this gruesome death toll as a backdrop, the UN is now warning that Yemen is facing the largest famine that the world has seen in many decades. According to Matthew Nims, the acting director of USAID's Food for Peace Program, who testified before Congress, famine is on the agenda now because the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen is ``using hunger as a weapon of war.''

Using hunger as a weapon of war, as a way to assault and destroy the civilian population, is completely in disregard of the laws of war. That weapon is proving to be brutally effective. More than 7 million Yemenis are food insecure tonight, which is a polite way of saying that they are on the brink of starving to death. As we speak, more than two out of three Yemenis have no idea where their next meal will come from.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-imposed military blockade against Yemen and the deliberate targeting in Yemen of water and sewage systems, along with hospitals and schools, have engendered, in that country, the largest civilian cholera crisis in recorded human history. More than 900,000 people are suffering from a massive outbreak of cholera, a bacterial disease that causes severe and painful diarrhea and dehydration, and which has already killed more than 2,000 women, men, and children.

The U.S. must act to save the people of Yemen. We are implicated because we have been refueling Saudi and UAE bombers and offering weapons, intelligence, and logistical support to the Saudi military campaign, despite the fact that Congress has never declared war or authorized military operations there. We must do everything in our power to end the blockade on humanitarian assistance and to reopen the pipeline of critical supplies, food, water, and medicine to the Yemeni population.

Congress has never authorized U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led war. I could understand that happening in Saudi Arabia itself, where there is no constitution and where the oil monarchy governs according to Sharia law and promotes Wahhabist extremism all over the world, but this is America, and we have been enabling a brutal war which has driven millions of people to the point of starvation without any declaration of war or explicit legal authorization.

The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator now says this is the greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people may die if the blockade is not lifted. While we celebrate Thanksgiving, mass starvation may have overtaken Yemen, yet the blockade is still very much in force.

We must do everything in our power to speed humanitarian assistance to the civilian population, to work towards a diplomatic solution in Yemen, to stop the atrocities on all sides, and to bring real peace to the region.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the important work of the Rachel Carson Council (RCC). Based in Bethesda, Maryland, the RCC seeks to honor and promote the environmental ethic of former Silver Spring resident Rachel Carson by linking environmental, health, and social policy solutions ``with the goal of building a more just, sustainable, and peaceful future.''

The RCC has documented the political and economic forces propelling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, while suggesting safer alternative solutions to build a clean and reliable energy portfolio. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a proposed $5.5 billion, 600-mile project to move the supply of natural gas fractured from the Marcellus and Utica Shale Basins in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania to meet growing energy demand in Virginia and North Carolina.

The RCC recently released a comprehensive report entitled, ``Blast Zone: Natural Gas and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.'' This report highlights the dangers of transporting natural gas and the underlying problems with existing natural gas fracturing methods, and it also questions the demand impetus for the project itself. Moreover, the report outlines serious attendant environmental and health risks, which they allege disproportionately affect minority communities and people living below the poverty line. For example, the RCC notes that in North Carolina, 30 out of 42 census tracts within one mile of the pipeline route have higher minority levels, and 27 out of 42 tracts have higher poverty levels than the state average.

Natural gas has been touted as a bridge fuel, but RCC argues that methane leakage rates range from 3.8 percent to 12 percent, with methane nearly 100 times more effective at trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere over a 20-year lifecycle. With the methane leakage factored into an environmental analysis, RCC concludes that natural gas is even worse for the climate than coal, with a leakage rate of above 3.2 percent.

The dangers of natural gas extraction and transportation were vividly illustrated by California's Aliso Canyon disaster, which spewed 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere over a four-month period from 2015 into 2016. Unexpected earthquakes in Oklahoma have been attributed to fracking wastewater disposal practices, a bizarre development which calls the lifecycle of the process' ecological benefits into greater question.

Mr. Speaker, it is becoming impossible to ignore the imminent peril posed by natural gas extraction and transportation. I urge my colleagues to review the well-researched ``Blast Zone'' report produced by the RCC, and to come together across party lines to develop energy efficient policies that will protect our environment, our economy, and our collective future.

Mr. Speaker, slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent means one thing: a massive windfall for investors. While the champagne flows at the Trump Hotel after-party, middle class Americans would get nothing from this plan other than their deductions taken away for medical expenses, housing, and college loan interest payments. People won't even be able to deduct for most State and local income taxes paid, while large corporations would continue to do so.

Here is the real shocker: fully 35 percent of the windfall, between $500 billion and $700 billion this decade, will go to foreign investors who own 35 percent of American stock. That money will be lost to us forever. It won't be there for Medicare or Medicaid or anything else.

Blowing up our deficit by $1.5 trillion while transferring that much wealth to big corporations is a terrible idea. It is atrocious when you realize that we won't just be spoiling superrich Americans with billions of dollars, we will be spoiling superrich foreigners, too.

Let's stop this speeding train and come up with a bipartisan tax plan that works for all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about a job-killer tax bill that is coming to Congress this week, and if you don't watch out, it could be coming to your hometown soon.

Up until yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I thought the new GOP tax plan was just run-of-the-mill, upside-down class warfare waged by the wealthiest people in the country against everybody else. I knew 80 percent of the windfall of the tax cut would go to people making $912,000 a year or more--the richest 1 percent of the country. I knew it would repeal the alternative minimum tax, the only reason that Donald Trump paid any taxes at all in the 1 year we know he paid taxes over the last few decades in 2005. I knew it would repeal the State and local income tax deduction, which would be terrible news for tens of millions of middle class people in States across the country, including mine in Maryland.

I knew it would repeal the estate tax which only affects the wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of the country. All of these provisions would help to create a

hereditary oligarchical elite like the hereditary oligarchical elite in Russia today.

This huge penthouse suite party will be paid for by the rest of us and blow a record-smashing $2 trillion deficit hole into our economy and programs like Medicare and Medicaid. I knew all of this. It is predictable enough.

But then I noticed a provision yesterday that is absolutely gobstopping, shocking, startling, eye-popping, unbelievable in the GOP tax blueprint. It is called the territorial system, and what it means is simple. We will tax American businesses only when their operations are here in America. Here is what that means: if I am a businessman and I am going to set up a manufacturing plant on main street in my hometown, I have to pay the full freight of taxes. I pay everything.

If I set my business, my new manufacturing plant, up in Mexico, or Bangladesh, or Ireland, I pay zero taxes. Let me repeat that: if I decide to set up my business in America, I pay 100 percent of the taxes I am going to owe. If I decide to relocate my business and all of the jobs abroad, I will pay zero taxes. That works even if I have already got the business in place here and I decide to ship everything overseas. Suddenly, I get a 100 percent tax break for all the profits that I earn overseas.

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I misunderstand it. I am not a professor of tax law. I am a professor of constitutional law. So maybe I am not interpreting it right. I would love nothing more than for one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle to get up and tell me it is not true, and correct me, and explain what I have got wrong.

But if I have got it right, this shocking provision tucked into the bill that we are about to see is a job killer, a national emergency, and a dagger pointed at the heart of the American economy and our jobs. It is only a few, small, big businesses, a few big businesses that will benefit.

Small businesses are not going to be benefited at all. The small businesses do not set up tax-dodging corporate subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, or the Bahamas, or in Ireland. They don't ship overseas. So this is for a tiny percentage of the largest corporations in America, leaving the small businesses behind and taking millions of American jobs with them.

Why would the majority do this to us when Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of putting America first and promising to bring American jobs back home--not export millions more with a devastating tax plan?

Now I see why they are hurdling this through Congress. In 1986, with the tax reform plan, there were 63 days of hearings, and more than 450 witnesses in Ways and Means and the Senate Finance Committee. It took 2 years and 10 months. This plan they want to slam through Congress in less than 2 weeks, with barely any witnesses, maybe no hearings, maybe one or two hearings; and you know why? Because they are tucking the most massive job-killing provision anyone has ever seen into this bill.

If anything, we should be imposing higher taxes on those businesses that ship our jobs overseas--not lower taxes--or they should pay the same. But this plan would wipe out any taxes at all, and it is dumbfounding that they would think this is something that Congress would put up with--just like they tried to slam through Congress the ACA repeal and we stopped it when people got the word.

We have got to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that every American understands what is really in this tax bill coming our way.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak. I want to start by saying that my colleague from North Carolina is here, and I know there is going to be a group of Members from North Carolina who are coming to address their constituents. So if you are a North Carolinian looking in on this, you have come to the right place, but you are going to have to hear me first. I am speaking on behalf of the Progressive Caucus.

I don't know if Representative Zeldin is still in the room. I couldn't quite resist the opportunity to respond to his provacative remarks where he said that it appears there are people in Congress who are so determined to take the President down.

I couldn't really figure out who he was talking about. Then I realized he is probably referring to Republican Senator John McCain from Arizona, or maybe Republican Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona, or maybe Republican Senator Bob Corker from Tennessee, all of whom have blown the whistle this week on the egregious violations of the basic norms of the Presidency by this President, who continues to demonize and vilify U.S. citizens and engage in the pettiest and most juvenile of exchanges with people and generally demonstrate what most Americans now regard as his unfitness for the Presidency.

So it seems like there was an attempt to make it a partisan issue. I think if he has got a partisan problem with what someone is saying about the President, he needs to talk to members of his own party who are the ones who are screaming the loudest about the outrageous excesses and abuses coming from the White House today.

That is not what I came here to talk about, Mr. Speaker. I just thought it was a little bit beyond my humanity to endure that lecture, especially about impeachment, when the Representative comes from a party that impeached President Clinton over one lie--one lie about sex--and we get a profusion of dozens of lies every single day from the White House, from this President, about matters of public policy, crucial matters of national security, and so on.

That is not even to get into the question of admitted obstruction of justice, bragging about the fact that he had fired the FBI Director because he was involved in the Russia investigation; not even talking about the rampant abuse of power that we see as recent as this week with apparently corrupt dealings in terms of the Puerto Rican rescue, when 80 percent of the island is still without power, and it looks like there are all sorts of sweetheart contracts that are afoot there.

It is not even to go to the question of the domestic Emoluments Clause and the foreign Emoluments Clause, which are defied every single day with the money that is pouring forth from foreign governments directly to the Trump Hotel and Trump Tower and the Trump golf courses all over the world.

I am not going to get into any of that stuff because I want to talk about something hopeful and uplifting tonight. I want to talk about America's responsibilities in the world, something that we used to take really seriously.

I want to talk about what America is and who we are and what debt of responsibility we owe to the rest of the world and how well we are doing today, given what is taking place around the world.

Now, in America, unlike most countries in the world--or at least a lot of countries in the world--we are not defined by virtue of being one race or one ethnicity or one religion or one political party or one system of belief. We are unified just by virtue of the fact that we have one Constitution and one Bill of Rights. We all agree to adhere to it and live under it and struggle for a more perfect union under that umbrella.

Mr. Speaker, every day we get to come to work, and we see the busts and the statues and the portraits of great Americans. We see Frederick Douglass, we see Thomas Jefferson, we see John Adams, we see George Washington.

Mr. Speaker, America was the first Nation on Earth conceived in revolutionary insurgency against a monarchy, an arbitrary political leadership, and the fusion of church and State.

Our forebearers rebelled against centuries of religious warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants every bit as vicious and bloody as what we see in the Muslim world today between the Sunni and the Shia. They rebelled against the idea that, as Tom Payne put it, the king is law. He said that in the democracies, law would be king.

That was the idea behind America. We would govern ourselves. As Jefferson put in the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal, all of us are endowed with inalienable rights--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--and government is legitimately erected only on the basis of the consent of the governed.

Now I hasten to say that all of those beautiful ideals were not realized at the start of our Nation. Let's not make-believe. Let's not pretend.

We didn't start, in the words of that great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, as a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. We started as a slave Republic of White male property owners over the age of 21, where the vast majority of people could not vote and could not participate: indentured servants, slaves, women, and so on.

But still, the idea was there, and those beautiful, tantalizing ideals were inserted by Thomas Jefferson, whose memory was defended recently by a group of hardy and defiant University of Virginia students who surrounded the statue of Thomas Jefferson to defend it against the rampaging mob of racist skinheads and Klansmen who had come to desecrate the memory of Jefferson and everything that he believed in with his ideals and the words that he put in the Declaration of Independence.

Those were the founding ideals of the country, and through successive waves of political and social struggle and constitutional change, we have opened America up. Through the Civil War and the Reconstruction amendments, we opened America up:

The 14th Amendment gave us equal protection and due process. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 15th Amendment said no discrimination on the basis of race in voting. The 17th Amendment shifted the mode of election from the State legislatures to the people. The 19th Amendment gave us woman suffrage. The 23rd Amendment said people here in the District of Columbia could participate in Presidential elections. The 24th Amendment abolished poll taxes. The 26th Amendment lowered the age of voting to 18 all across the whole country.

The whole trajectory of our constitutional development has been towards greater equality and freedom for the American people. That is who we are. We are a nation that united with other nations around the world to defeat fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, communism, and totalitarianism in the last century. We did that.

We stood with Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations in proclaiming the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press, taking all those rights and freedoms that we fought for in America that are in our Constitution and trying to make them a global ideal so that all of the people of the world could enjoy the fruits and the experience of liberal democracy.

When we stood at our best as a country, we have been on the side of freedom movements. We have been on the side of human rights. We have been on the side of victims of government authoritarianism and persecution. That is who we are as a country.

It is all being forgotten and frittered away with the chaos that has descended not just upon the White House--that is too easy, I would say to my dear friend Mr. Zeldin--on this institution, on lots of institutions in Washington, D.C. We are forgetting who we are.

Tom Payne said America was a nation conceived as a haven of refuge for people fleeing from religious and political persecution from all over the world. That is why our great symbol has been the Statue of Liberty and not a 14th century wall and barbed wire. That is not the real symbol of America.

Now, we are living in a time of rising authoritarianism and tyranny all over the world, from Russia to Saudi Arabia to Hungary to the Philippines to Venezuela. You name it. Authoritarian states everywhere are cracking down on free speech and free press, jailing enemies of the states and journalists, persecuting citizens for their religious beliefs and denying the essential human rights that are encoded in our national DNA, in our Constitution, and in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

While the White House and this administration have abandoned U.S. leadership for human rights, the governments of the world are stepping up their authoritarianism. In Burma, in

Myanmar, the government is waging brutal ethnic and religious violence against Rohingya Muslims, thousands of whom have been killed and more than 100,000 of whom have fled the country, in terror.

Now, this savage campaign of ethnic cleansing in Burma by the Buddhist-led government is being turned on all Muslims in that country. And what is our government doing? Nothing.

In Turkey, which I will have a little bit more to say about in a moment, there is a vicious crackdown on free speech and free press, and the jailing of journalists and citizens without due process. In Russia, there continues to be outrageous human rights abuses against the personal political enemies of Vladimir Putin; against the LGBT community, which continues to be reviled and demonized by the government. In Chechnya, there are campaigns against journalists, and so on. In the Philippines, President Duterte has overseen the killing of thousands of people in a brutal war on drugs, with no due process at all, where the police can simply declare that you look like a drug user, you look like a drug dealer, and then they can have you killed.

It is also in Venezuela, where Maduro has consolidated his power and is denying the rule of law at every turn; in Saudi Arabia; in Iran, which was mentioned before, with brutal campaigns against ethnic minorities--one of the leading administrators of capital punishment on Earth, fomenting terror abroad.

Saudi Arabia, which Freedom House calls among the worst of the worst, where torture is present, where women are victims of almost pervasive sex discrimination--I think just a couple of months ago they won a limited right to drive in 2017--and on and on.

And across the world, governments have passed laws against blasphemy, against heresy, against apostasy, against witchcraft, against sorcery, against all kinds of imaginary religious offenses which were wiped off of the books of our State laws centuries ago under the First Amendment, and yet there are people rotting in jail today because they belong to the wrong religious group and they are accused of blasphemy or apostasy in Iran or in Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh, or any other number of countries which use the tools of the state to oppress people because of their religious faith and their religious worship.

What does President Trump do? Well, he personally praised Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and invited him to come to America. His first state visit was to Saudi Arabia, where he publicly said that he was not going to take issue with anything that they were doing in terms of human rights, didn't speak about any of the people rotting in jail in Saudi Arabia in a way that completely violates the human rights understandings and norms of the world.

He has praised Erdogan in Turkey. And, of course, we know of his infamous and somewhat inscrutable relationship with Vladimir Putin, certainly has nothing to say about human rights violations taking place against Russians, tens of thousands of whom have summoned up the courage since the President took office to march in the streets against political corruption and for human rights. And our government does nothing to support the people in civil society in Russia who are trying to stand up for the idea of human rights in their country.

Trump says, when he goes to Saudi Arabia: We are not here to lecture. We must seek partners, not perfection.

And he has found those partners all over the world: Duterte in the Philippines, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary. On and on down the list, you find a despot, you find a tyrant, you find a kleptocrat and a bully, you have found a newfound buddy of the United States of America.

Now, over the summer, media outlets reported that the State Department wanted to drop the promotion of democracy and human rights from the Department's mission. The State Department has since eliminated the www.humanrights.gov website and moved its content to an alternative and more obscure web address.

In May of 2017, Secretary of State Tillerson reversed decades of bipartisan consensus that human rights and democracy are not only essential components of U.S. foreign policy and national security, but universal values that the U.S. has adopted as a guiding principle of international legitimacy. And, of course, everyone knows of President Trump's attempts to withdraw from treaties and agreements all over the world, including, of course, the Paris accord on climate change.

Now, all of these actions, all of these statements are a betrayal of who we are as a country. We are not defined by race. We are not defined by ideology, unlike other countries around the world. We are not defined by religion. We are defined by an idea of liberal democracy committed to equality and freedom for all. If we give that up and we surrender that, we surrender what is most precious and defining about the United States of America, Mr. Speaker.

And guess what. We have got human rights problems right here at home that we need to be dealing with.

Do you know we have millions of Americans who can't vote and are not represented in Congress? This anomaly was brought home to us in a very sharp way over the last several weeks with the crisis in Puerto Rico, where people still lack access to medicines that they need, where people--a majority of the population still lacks access to clean water, and power is out for four-fifths of the population. Those are our people. Those are our citizens. Those are Americans in Puerto Rico.

But why were they treated differently? Why was there this notorious negligence and lethargy in responding to the plight of people in Puerto Rico? Well, they have no voting representatives in this Chamber or in the United States Senate, so we have got millions of people unrepresented.

Right here in the Nation's Capital, in the District of Columbia, we see the exact same democratic deficit, the exact same discrepancy and discord between our values and our ideals and what the reality of daily practice is. We are the only democratic nation left on Earth where the people of the capital city are disenfranchised in their national legislature. We are the only one.

I have only been in this body for 10 months, Mr. Speaker, but I have noted how frequently and how joyfully this body will rise to trample the local legislation adopted by people in the District of Columbia who can't fight back because they don't have voting representation in Congress, and so we are very happy to kick them around if they have got a different point of view on death with dignity. Of course, death with dignity in the District of Columbia should be of no concern to us. What should be of concern is life with democracy in the District of Columbia if we are going to be faithful to our ideals.

They get to decide, not us. But as long as they are excluded from representation in the national legislature, they are going to continue to be kicked around on questions of gay rights and whether or not poor women can be given full access to reproductive healthcare in the District of Columbia, another issue where the majority in this body decided to squash the political self-determination of more than 650,000 American citizens who live right here in the Nation's Capital.

We have got millions of people who are disenfranchised. That is a human rights problem. So we have got to deal with that. Maybe if America begins to stand up again for human rights around the world, we will begin to stand up again for human rights in our own country.

So this is not a partisan issue. Of course, one of our great leaders in the advancement of human rights in America was President Abraham Lincoln, a great Republican, and his friend Frederick Douglass, a great Republican. I take pride in that. I take pride in the Republicans who fought for freedom and democracy in America. They are as much a part of my legacy as great Democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt or President Barack Obama, the people who fought for civil rights and civil liberties in my party. So we should cherish everybody in our history who moved forward the engines of freedom and democratic change in the country.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say these are tough times in America. There is a lot of chaos that has descended upon our country, and, Mr. Speaker, we need all Americans to know, but especially young Americans to know, what we really stand for.

We have a claim, a very strong claim to being the greatest nation on Earth, and it has got nothing to do with the military, and it has got nothing to do with our GDP. It has got to do with the way we were created, what our founding ideals were, and then the commitment of the people always to try to realize those ideals and engender a more perfect Union as we go along.

Let's keep America moving in that direction so we will continue to be a beacon of light to oppressed people all over the world.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank Congressman Khanna for his leadership in putting this together.

Madam Speaker, I want to invoke a great Republican member of this body who went on to become President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who spoke of ``government of the people, by the people, for the people.''

The tax plan that has been presented to us by the GOP in the 21st century is government of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, and for the 1 percent. It was written by a billionaire Cabinet of a billionaire President for the richest 1 percent of taxpayers in the country.

The same policy experts whose healthcare plan was to throw 30 million Americans off their health insurance and reduce women's access to complete reproductive services now have a tax plan to sell America. But read the fine print first. In fact, you don't even need to read the fine print. You just have to look at the headlines.

Under this plan, 80 percent of the total tax cut will end up going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans who earn more than $900,000 a year. Let me repeat that: 80 percent of the money that will be saved in this tax cut will go to Americans earning $900,000 a year. That is astounding.

In the meantime, tens of millions of middle class families making between $50,000 and $150,000 a year will pay higher taxes than they were paying before. And check this out. The very wealthiest sliver of Americans, those who make at least $5 million a year, and, on average, $16 million a year, would get an average tax cut of over $1 million. That is a $1 million tax cut for millionaires.

The slogan for this plan should be: The Trump tax cut, because the rich just aren't rich enough and everybody else is doing just fine.

Madam Speaker, if you know anyone who makes $16 million a year, please ask them to write me and tell me what they are going to do with their extra $1 million. Maybe they will send it to a Swiss bank account or to the Bahamas; maybe they will run for Congress; maybe they will invest it in Australia where a lot of the superrich are apparently now buying property in order to have a getaway plan from the escalating crises of climate change in North America.

So the billionaires make out like bandits.

What about the rest of us? How much will this plan cost us?

Well, the bipartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget's initial analysis shows that the GOP plan would add $2.2 trillion to deficits over the next decade. This is the result of cutting taxes for the wealthy by a staggering $5.8 trillion and then adding new tax revenue of only $3.6 trillion, so we are going to be adding $2.2 trillion in deficits.

What about the deficit hawks?

They are an endangered species, as Congresswoman Pelosi says now. Actually, they have mutated into a completely new species. We don't have deficit hawks anymore. We have deficit ostriches. They are willing to squawk and strut and kick dust like hawks when there is a Democrat in the White House, but when a budget-busting, deficit-ballooning, debt-deepening Republican occupies the White House and proposes inflating the deficit and the debt to unprecedented levels with the most breathtaking fiscal recklessness anyone has ever seen, they become deficit chicken hawks and transmogrify into deficit doves, and then finally turn into fast scurrying deficit ostriches and run away from everything they have been saying for years about the necessity to reduce the deficit, they simply bury their heads deep in the sand and let the debt and the deficits climb up all around them.

Speaker Paul Ryan, when he was campaigning with Mitt Romney, said the national debt is threatening jobs today, it is threatening our prosperity today. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while calling for changes to Social Security and Medicare in 2013, told supporters only one thing can save this country, and that is to get a handle on the deficit and debt issue. Well, that was then, this is now, as they say. Now the GOP leaders are twisting arms to vote for a tax plan that will blow up the deficit and drive our children and our grandchildren's generations deeply into debt.

What happened to all of the fine speeches we heard about how we owe it to our kids not to engage in deficit spending? What happened to all the magnificent oratory about how the national debt is a moral crisis?

Can any of the Members of Congress, who built their careers on the principle of deficit reduction and ending the debt, explain why it is responsible today to add more than $2 trillion to our national deficit?

We await an answer, Madam Speaker.

Why are they doing this to America? Why are they proposing it? Who wins with this assault on the common good?

Well, let's see. Donald Trump and his family certainly do. The only President who ever bragged that he would be able to make money by running for President is showing what a good job he is actually doing at achieving his objective.

A New York Times analysis shows that Trump and his family could save more than $1 billion under this plan. That is right, the President and his family could save more than $1 billion under the tax proposal that has been sent to us in Congress. Of course, it is impossible to know precisely how much would be saved because President Trump, despite his campaign promise to release his tax returns, if elected, still refuses to release his tax returns, which constitutes not only a radical breach of faith with the people, but a radical break from past practices of other Presidents for the last half century, who have opened up their tax records for the rest of us to see.

But let's see what we can do based on information we know. This proposal

would eliminate the estate tax, which would generate massive tax savings for President Trump and his family. If his assets, reportedly valued at $2.86 billion, were transferred after his death under today's rules, his estate would be taxed at around the 40 percent level, still leaving his heirs with more than $1 billion.

Repealing the Federal estate tax, which they propose to do, would save his family $1.1 billion, at least, in estate tax costs.

Why would we do this?

The Founders of our country were passionately opposed to hereditary wealth, just like they were passionately opposed to hereditary government. They thought it was dangerous to have the intergenerational transmission of wealth and great fortunes like that. They said that it would cause idleness and irresponsibility in the heirs to great wealth, and they would be able to convert their wealth not just into bigger estates, bigger land purchases, bigger houses, but actually in the public offices. They had a very profound democratic critique of that kind of intergenerational wealth inequality, because, at a certain point, you have bought enough houses, you have bought enough jets, and now you want a governorship, you want the Presidency, you want a Senate seat. In a democracy, we need to have much reduced levels of inequality that are being proposed under this idea of abolishing the estate tax.

They also are proposing to abolish the alternative minimum tax, which is the only reason that President Trump paid any taxes in the one year over the last two decades that we know he paid taxes in, in 2005. Remember, somebody mysteriously leaked information about that year to the Rachel Maddow show, and it turned out that the President paid taxes because of the alternative minimum tax which says that you can't push a good joke too far, you can only use all of your deductions and allowances, and so on, up to a certain point. If you are at a certain place, in terms of your wealth, you have got to pay something.

Well, The New York Times now estimates that the GOP tax plan to repeal the alternative minimum tax would save the President at least $31.3 million. He would not have had to pay in that one year that we know where he paid taxes, and we don't know about the rest because he has refused to release it.

And let's just look at one more provision, which would change the treatment of pass-through business income. According to The New York Times, President Trump could save as much as $6.2 million on business income and $9.8 million on income from real estate and other kinds of partnerships under changes to the taxation of pass-through income.

Now, look, Madam Speaker, nobody likes paying taxes, nobody loves it, especially when we know that there are billions of dollars being wasted, for example, at the Department of Defense in boondoggles, fraud, and abuse taking place, according to a hearing that we had just this session in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. So people don't love the experience.

But just as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, that he didn't mind paying his taxes because he understood that they were the price of civilization. It is what we all put in, in order to have roads and highways and airports and schools and universities. That is what it means to be a citizen. People don't mind, as long as there is a basic sense in the public that everybody is participating and we are not getting ripped off.

And I am terrified that if they succeed in barreling this plan through Congress, that it is going to spread more cynicism and more disenchantment and more negativity about the tax system and about the government, and we can't afford it. Because of the escalating crises of climate change, which are all around us, our people are suffering. We have millions of people in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands tonight who have no access to power, no access to electricity or clean water. We have people in Florida and Texas and Mississippi and Louisiana who are still recovering from the last hurricanes. We have Californians, many of whom have died already, who are struggling against the forest fires out of control.

Now is a point when we need a tax system that brings our people together, that says that wealthier people can pay more because they are wealthy, but everybody is going to pay their share, and we are all going to participate together. That is the tax system we should be looking for, a tax system where we get rid of all of the special interest inflected deductions and allowances and loopholes and rip-offs that are built into the system, where it is simplified.

In the European countries, you can pay your taxes in about 10 or 15 minutes, and you don't have to go to the multibillion-dollar tax preparation industry, or go find a law firm to do it. We can simplify our taxes if we decide to get rid of all of the special interest loopholes. And wealthy people can pay more because they get more out of being part of this society, and they use more of the infrastructure of the country, instead of paying less than everybody else, instead of trying to rip off the system by paying nothing.

Madam Speaker, now is the time when we need the wisest and most principled leadership to get us through the accumulating crises of the time. This tax plan is totally irresponsible. I hope that it will be withdrawn and we can work together across the aisle on a bipartisan plan that will represent the best values of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Madam Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from California for allowing me this opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my profound concern about renewed violence in the Western Myanmar State of Rakhine and the resulting refugee and humanitarian crisis.

The growing violence in Myanmar's Rakhine State has already claimed the lives of 1,000 men, women and children who were brutally killed in recent clashes between the Myanmar military and Rohingya civilians. The military has also reportedly targeted some of the alleged survivors who sought justice and protection within Myanmar, leaving little recourse for those being victimized but to flee the country to neighboring Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims have long been victims of official discrimination, living as a stateless minority community under restrictive citizenship laws and constant threat of abuse and violence. The government of Myanmar must begin taking concrete steps to stop the downward spiral of sectarian violence, which imperils the safety of upwards of a million Rohingya Muslims.

More than half a million Rohingya have fled Myanmar since major clashes occurred on August 25, 2017. Using satellite imagery, Human Rights Watch has documented more than 700 buildings in the Rohingya Muslim village of Chein Khar Li have been burned, accounting for more than 99 percent of the village. An additional 450 buildings were recently spotted smoldering in Maungdaw, the administrative capital of Maungdaw Township. This destruction suggests a coordinated effort to drive the Rohingya population out of the country.

There are divergent reports regarding who is to blame for the chaos in Western Myanmar. Refugees blame the Myanmar military while the government blames the militant Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). For this reason, it is imperative that the government permit entry of a U.N. Human Rights Commission Fact Finding Mission to impartially document and assess the violence occurring in Rakhine State.

Timely and accurate information about the crisis is especially crucial in this conflict because Myanmar has cracked down on the media, using all the draconian tools at its disposal to keep criticism hidden from public view. The government has actually prosecuted scores of individuals under an egregious defamation law that has criminalized social media postings that merely express the plight of the Rohingya people. The international human rights community has criticized Myanmar's Telecommunications Law for its vagueness, its severity of punishment, and its sweeping chilling effect on freedom of expression.

The government of Myanmar should begin adopting the recommendations of the Kofi Annan Foundation Advisory Commission on Rakhine State contained in the August 2017 Final Report, which was released the day before violence in the region erupted. These recommendations include providing dignified living conditions in camps for internally displaced persons and granting national and international humanitarian groups full access to the communities of Rakhine State. The continuing censorship of the media suggests that the government does not want the world to witness the crimes that are being perpetrated in the Rakhine State.

It is my hope that Myanmar will begin taking substantial and sustained steps to prevent any further violence in Rakhine State. I urge my colleagues to join me in calling on Myanmar to take meaningful action to desegregate the Rohingya Muslim population, repeal its repressive criminal defamation law, and permit human rights observers access to monitor the situation.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise for my constituent, Allie, because we should not be playing politics in Congress with women's health choices and with the family decisionmaking rights of all Americans.

Last spring, Allie and her husband were thrilled to learn that she was pregnant with their second child. A few months later, they found themselves heartbroken in a doctor's office in order to terminate a pregnancy that they had so badly wanted.

Everything had gone smoothly until about 12 weeks, when a routine test returned with extremely abnormal results. Allie and her husband hoped for the best and waited several more weeks until they could perform an amnio.

Sadly, the results of the amnio were unbearable. They found that the fetus had grown from a compromised cell line. There were multiple genetic anomalies that would result if the pregnancy continued to term in a child with extraordinarily grave and untreatable physical, cognitive, and developmental problems.

The news was crushing and the decision was agonizing, but Allie knew the path forward for her family was clear. She would become part of the tiny group of women having abortions after 20 weeks, less than 2 percent of all abortions.

But Allie's story doesn't end with the decision that she and her husband made. Because she is a Federal employee, the Hyde amendment prevented her insurance from covering her abortion services. Fortunately, Maryland is a State where we respect women's choices, and Allie was able to go to a clinic and she paid $900 out of pocket.

Allie recovered quickly from the procedure and she was able to get pregnant shortly thereafter. This summer, Allie and her husband were thrilled to welcome a beloved second child into their family.

Mr. Speaker, Allie has one thing to say to lawmakers here today: We made the choices that are best for our family, and I trust all women to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this essential question of public integrity. I also want to salute my colleague from California (Mr. Ted Lieu), who has been a leading voice in demanding real financial accountability in the administration.

I want to underscore some of the things that my colleagues have said, Mr. Speaker. If there are any Americans out there who love to fly wherever

they want, whenever they want, at taxpayer expense, then we have got the perfect job for you in President Trump's Cabinet. Now, of course, only billionaires and millionaires need apply for these jobs, but if you have a taste for fancy chartered air travel, paid for by hardworking Americans across the country, this is undoubtedly the job for you.

My friends, while millions of desperate Americans are suffering in the sweltering posthurricane conditions of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, we have got Cabinet Secretaries who should be doing everything in their power to save our people but are, instead, looking out for something far more important, apparently, than other Americans' mere survival. They are focused on their own first class, private charter, airplane flights to cushy destinations, paid for by hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money. We kid you not.

This comes out this week. It comes out that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is less interested in health and human services than he is in wealth and valet services. Despite the fact that he blasted the use of government-paid jet travel on CNBC just a few short years ago, he seems to have come down with a severe and chronic case of swamp fever, billing you and me and millions of other Americans for 26 customized, deluxe, premier, first class, private charter, plane flights at taxpayer expense, at an extraordinary estimated cost of more than $400,000. That is just one Cabinet Secretary.

Now, I can't blame him for one of the trips that he took in August to the beautiful and secluded St. Simons Island in southern Georgia, and another trip that enabled him to get to his condo in Nashville and to have lunch with his son. You can hardly blame him for wanting to get out of town and to see the family. After all, it was hot here in Washington, D.C., as climate change sets in across America and the world. But as we say on Capitol Hill: ``It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.''

And look at what our Secretary of Health and Human Services did, and here I will read from Politico, September 26, an article entitled ``Price's private-jet travels included visits with colleagues, lunch with son.''

``The HHS Secretary sometimes combined official travel and meetings with friends and family. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took a government-funded private jet in August to get to St. Simons Island, an exclusive Georgia resort where he and his wife own land, a day and a half before he addressed a group of local doctors at a medical conference that he and his wife have long attended.

``The St. Simons Island trip was one of two taxpayer-funded flights on private jets in which Price traveled to places where he owns property, and paired official visits with meetings with longtime colleagues and family members. On June 6, HHS chartered a jet to fly Price to Nashville, Tennessee, where he owns a condominium and where his son resides. Price toured a medicine dispensary and spoke to a local health summit organized by a longtime friend. He also had lunch with his son. . . .

``An HHS official said both the Georgia and Tennessee trips were for official government business and were paid for by the Department.''

It is no problem getting out of town and going to see your family but, really, do the taxpayers have to pay for it?

If the taxpayers have to pay for trips like this, couldn't Secretary Price at least fly on first class commercial airplanes, rather than jacking up the taxpayers for tens of thousands of dollars to book a private airplane to do it?

Politico asked the same question. Here they said:

``Like some of the other 26 flights that Price took on corporate jets since May identified by a Politico review, the trip to Tennessee appears to have occurred despite the existence of multiple commercial flight options. The trip to Georgia, while less direct, also could have been accomplished with a routine connecting flight through Atlanta's busy international airport.

``On August 4, Price flew a Dassault Falcon 2000 twin jet from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he had given a speech to a flu vaccine manufacturer, to Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, which is about a half- hour drive from St. Simons Island. It was the same plane that had shuttled him between five States in four days, one that HHS had chartered through Classic Air Charter for more than $86,000, according to Federal contracts.

``The plane arrived in Brunswick at 4:02 p.m. the afternoon before the start of the two-day Medical Association of Georgia retreat and roughly 40 hours before Price addressed the group, according to airport records. . . .''

``At about the same time, there were connecting commercial flights from Raleigh to Brunswick via Atlanta that would have gotten Price to St. Simons Island that evening.''

My friends, you can go back and you can look. In all of these cases, for example, Secretary Price chartered a plane for $25,000 of government money from Dulles Airport to Philadelphia, a distance of a mere 135 miles. That charter flight left 5 minutes after a regular flight flew, commercial flight flew, from Dulles for a few hundred dollars. So he paid $25,000 and left several minutes later than he would have left had he just taken the commercial flight.

He also could have taken, of course, the Amtrak, which is what most people do when they are going to Philadelphia from the Washington area, for a mere $72. Even the first class Acela would have been around $200. He could have taken the British Airways--they go there--whose slogan is: ``To Fly. To Serve.'' I guess that is not quite right. Or he could have taken Southwest Airlines. Their slogan is: ``Low fares. Nothing to hide.'' I see that wouldn't have fit. Maybe JetBlue, ``You Above All.'' That could have worked.

But no, instead, he had to book the private jet and fly for $25,000 from here to Philadelphia.

Mr. Speaker, this is an old Washington story. The people who say they are coming to drain the swamp have become the swamp. And this is not something that affects just one Cabinet Secretary. Several Cabinet Secretaries are doing this, as my colleagues have pointed out.

With Secretary Price, who seems to be the captain of the swamp flyers; Secretary Pruitt, who is a frequent swamp flyer himself; and Secretary Mnuchin, another swamp flyer, we have a serious staph infection spreading throughout the Trump administration.

And why not, the President seems to have evolved a whole new model of government in the 21st century. Government is a money-making operation for specific families and specific tiny groups in the society. And that is the message that pervades the Trump administration today.

Mr. Speaker, we need to pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act, which is very simple. It says that those of us who have the honor and the privilege of coming to serve the American people here in Washington, D.C., should use regular commercial air flights unless it is a matter of national security, or unless there is not a commercial flight that will get them to where they need to go.

But the idea that you have Cabinet Secretaries who have already taken dozens of flights, paid for with hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, of taxpayer money when a commercial flight would have done is an absolute scandal. Now, it hasn't gotten much attention yet because on the scale of the scandals we have seen in this administration, I agree, it is a relatively small one. But it is a dramatic and vivid illustration of what is going on here.

The people who said they were going to drain the swamp became the swamp. And now, the swamp pervades everything. Every Cabinet member, all of the Secretaries, the entire government is engulfed in this kind of corruption.

It begins right at the top, where President Trump has continued to collect hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars in foreign payments at the Trump Hotels, at the Trump office tower, and the Trump golf courses around the world from foreign governments, and has not once come to the U.S. Congress to ask for our permission and consent as is required by Article I, section 9, clause 8 of the Constitution, which forbids the collection of presents, emoluments, offices, and titles from foreign governments by anybody who serves under the United States, who holds an office under the United States.

This President is not only collecting rampant, extreme amounts of money through his businesses from foreign governments, he is not even asking us for our permission or our consent. We have got to pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act.

I commend Mr. Lieu for writing this immediately when the news broke about this rampant abuse of current regulations. We need to take a stand as a Congress on a bipartisan level. Unanimously, we can pass this to say that government officials should not be flying at taxpayer expense for dubious reasons. We should be using coach like everybody else, flying commercial like everybody else.

If you have got to fly first class, fine, fly first class, but fly commercial unless it is a matter of national security, or unless there is not a commercial flight that will get you there. Is that something that we can agree on, on a bipartisan basis?

I just want to say, earlier today we saw a magnificent example of real public service and public dedication by our distinguished colleague, Mr. Scalise, who has returned, thankfully, to this body. He demonstrates and embodies what is best in terms of public service. Unfortunately, we have also seen in Washington this week the personification of what is the worst in public service. We have got to stop taking the American taxpayers for a ride.

Let's pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act immediately.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate, honor and thank a truly impressive young constituent from my district, 14-year old Ryan Darby, who is completing two years of exemplary service as a National Youth Ambassador for the Hyundai Hope On Wheels Foundation to fight pediatric cancer.

Ryan lives in Bethesda, Maryland and is himself a cancer survivor. He was selected to serve as a Hyundai Hope On Wheels National Youth Ambassador in March 2016.

Since then, Ryan has traveled across America to share his story of illness, resiliency, courage and hope and to inspire others to participate in the fight against cancer.

Ryan joined Hyundai Hope On Wheels in its continuing mission to educate people about pediatric cancer and to raise money--over $130 million since 1998--to find a cure.

Over the last two years, Ryan visited many children's hospitals and attended events to stand in solidarity with children and families who are battling cancer or who have been affected by the disease. He has spoken at numerous schools and even shared his story on TV and radio.

Ryan was only six years old when he was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and he became one tough cancer survivor.

He is an inspiring example of physical courage, mental toughness and devotion to the well-being of others. I am especially proud of him for giving others hope. We encourage and applaud the kind of selfless contributions this young man has made.

I wish Ryan Darby the best of luck with all his future endeavors, and I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to join me in congratulating him on a job well done as he completes his service as a 2016-2017 Hyundai Hope On Wheels National Youth Ambassador.