Floor Statements

Thank you, Congressman Garamendi. And thank you for all of your work and for pointing out the many benefits of the Affordable Care Act, which, as many Americans know, took effect today.

There were so many people that were anxious and excited about getting health care coverage, about comparing prices to see if they might get a lower price for insurance that the Web site actually had glitches, it had problems. But that is a good thing. And in Texas, we know that problem very well. We're the State that has the highest percentage of people that don't have health care coverage at all.

Would you believe that one out of four Texans--25 percent of kids and 25 percent of adults--have no health care coverage at all. Thirty percent of women don't have health care coverage. Thirty-eight percent of Hispanics in Texas don't have health care coverage. And so the fact that the Affordable Care Act and the exchanges kicked off today is a great day for Texas and a great day for Americans.

But as we think about what's going on today--and today has been a very sad day in our country not only because this is the first time in 17 years that our U.S. Government has shut down but because of the way it happened. And I think that, you know, when people woke up today and they turned on the news or the radio or picked up the newspaper and they saw a government shutdown, the people who usually live their lives, work hard every day, sometimes don't have a lot of time to pay attention to politics, saw those headlines and thought, What are these guys up in Washington doing? What are they up to? And that played into all of the stereotypes about how bad Congress is, about how bad politicians are.

But let's think about how this happened. During the summer, there's a junior Senator from Texas, from my home State that barnstormed the Nation and our State, insisting that we defund what was derisively called ObamaCare, that we get rid of all of the patient protections and all of the great things that you have just described. And he, in fact, said that he would do everything in his power, everything in his power to make sure that that law was defunded.

Now you and I both know that you pass laws, you do budgets, and you also raise the debt ceiling limit, but that those are different things, that you don't hold one hostage to the other. But he insisted and got many of the Tea Party members in the House of Representatives--in fact, he had conference calls with them, had personal meetings with them. His folks were calling out the Speaker of the House on Twitter and on Facebook, when the Speaker thought about being reasonable, passing a clean CR so that we could go about the Nation's business.

And it became clear that this was playing into a pattern that has developed with Republicans since 2010, since the increase in Tea Party Republican members. This is the pattern. Think about the sequester. That came about in 2011 through the Budget Control Act. It mostly came about because there was a lot of pressure by Tea Party Republicans to cut in every single corner of government. And so we got a bad law, the sequester, which I think most people acknowledge now is bad.

But if you will remember, Congressman, when that happened, these Republicans who for years, for years have been staking their careers on cutting government, all of a sudden magically were running away from the fact that they did it, were acting like, Wow, that was never our idea. It was the President who wanted sequester. It was the Democrats who insisted on sequester. When, in fact, for years and years and even more intensely since 2010, they have been demanding that we cut government no matter what. But when it happened, many of them wouldn't claim it. They say, That wasn't us.

Well, let's fast forward now 2 years. The same thing happens with a government shutdown. So the government shuts down as they wanted. And what happens the next morning? Folks come to the floor. They do interviews on television. They give quotes in the newspaper saying, It wasn't us. We've been

saying this the whole time, but it wasn't us. It was the Democrats that did it.

Look, if you're going to advocate for something, if you're going to push for something, then you need to own it, and you need to accept it.

Now I will say, if you look at a lot of the social media sites for Republicans, a lot of those Tea Party supporters are very honest about what they want. I had a chance to read through many of them yesterday. And they said, Shut it down. Shut the government down.

Now, look, there may be a small percentage of Americans who feel that way, who are so frustrated with government, who are so frustrated with American society that they do, in fact, want to shut America down. But the vast majority of both Republicans and Democrats know that that's a horrendous thing.

So what we have today are some errant comments by folks who slipped up politically and said, Yes, we're happy about shutting this thing down. But then you have another group of folks who, even though they voted in lockstep with Senator Cruz and the Tea Party Republicans, now try to cast aspersions on the folks who tried to stop it, the Democrats. You can't have it both ways. If you advocated for it for years, if this was your strategy, then when it happens, you take responsibility for the results.

Now there's also been a little bit of debate about, well, how do you handle this situation? We know, as I said, that you don't hold the budget hostage to policy. In other words, you don't try to change policy through the budget. We understand that.

So just to crystallize that, I would ask my colleagues, if you think it's okay to not raise the debt ceiling limit or approve a budget because you disagree with public policy, a law that was passed 3 years ago, then I would ask you, should we not approve a budget, as Democrats? Or should we not raise the debt ceiling limit because we believe that there should be a comprehensive immigration reform plan with a path to citizenship?

Now bear in mind, these guys are saying that the Affordable Care Act is upside down in its numbers. In other words, there are probably about 53 percent of Americans saying, quite frankly, that they don't like it right now. More and more are liking it. But they're right on those numbers.

Well, 60 percent of Americans say they want comprehensive immigration reform. Ninety percent of Americans said they wanted background checks. Should we hold out and say, We're not going to raise the debt ceiling limit unless we get universal background checks or we get comprehensive immigration reform? Of course not. And Democrats have acted responsibly. There's a reason that we've not done that. Because we respect this democracy. We respect the Nation. And we're honest with the Nation.

So I hope that as cooler heads prevail that we'll be able to resolve this, that we'll be able to pass a clean CR, and that we will be able to do the people's business in a respectful and honest way.

Thank you, Congressman, very much for the time.

I'm happy to hear that.

Thank you, Congressman Garamendi, and thank you, Congressman Tonko and Congressman Ryan, for your very eloquent words in describing the situation that we face today.

I, like millions of Americans, hope that there will not be a government shutdown. I hope that we can get past the hostage politics that have prevailed over this place over the last few years. This is no way to run a government. Our Nation is the strongest nation on Earth, and we are the most exceptional nation on Earth. These wounds are self- inflicted ones.

I have said many times and have heard from my constituents that all of these fiscal fights, these self-inflicted wounds by Congress--when we get up to the limit where we are supposed to pass a budget or we are supposed to raise the debt ceiling limit--are causing the Nation high blood pressure. They are affecting the market in negative ways. The stock market is taking a hit. Our employment rates are taking a hit. In every way, this has been bad for the country.

I would also remind our Members of Congress and the American people about what happened the last time brinksmanship was tried. The last time this happened, the sequester resulted--a bad way to do business. I think people on both sides of the aisle would agree that the sequester did not turn out well for our Nation, but that's the same road we are headed down again. The Republicans are taking us down the same road that gave us the sequester--the Budget Control Act. Then the cuts that really were across the board were not targeted and have hurt the military, have hurt education, have hurt health care, and we are headed down the same road.

Congressman, the last time you and I spoke--I guess about a month ago here on the floor--I mentioned that, in politics, you are often asked whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. What is it that you stand for? I think, as Democrats, what we believe in are a few things that have made this Nation great.

The first is freedom, because we are a free people. That freedom has been hard fought. I come from San Antonio, Texas--Military City USA. The people of San Antonio and the people of Texas know the high price of freedom.

The second is democracy. We are a democratic Nation. Because we are free, we get to elect our leaders, and we get to kick them out of office when we no longer believe that they are representing our views and our values.

But much of the politics of today is really fought over the third principle and value, which is opportunity. You see, what is special about this country and the reason that, for years and years, people from all over the world have wanted to come to America is that, as Americans, we have come together to build out what I call an ``infrastructure of opportunity'' that enables each of us to pursue our American dreams. I want to remind you of what I mean by that.

Just as there is an infrastructure of transportation--a system of streets and roads and highways that help all of us get to where we want to go on the road--in American society, we have built up together an infrastructure of opportunity that enables or at least helps each of us get to where we want to go in life, and that has to include certain things that are at risk when we get into hostage politics--great public schools and universities; a strong health care system so that, if you get sick, you don't become debilitated or die; and then an economy that's built around well-paying jobs so that people can support themselves and their family members. It's that second part that I mentioned--health care--that has been at issue in this debate.

I just want to close by saying this, that the junior Senator from Texas, a few days ago, talked about how he was speaking for 26 million Texans when he was threatening to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act, which he derisively calls ``ObamaCare.'' He does not speak for 26 million Texans. The fact is that Texas has the highest percentage of people who have no health care coverage at all. There are a lot of families who are having to take their kids to the emergency rooms, who are getting letters from their insurance companies because they have hit their lifetime caps. They are getting letters of their being denied coverage because they have preexisting conditions. The Affordable Care Act is going to change that. It's going to be a good thing for our State.

So I would just note that there are a lot of people in Texas who are excited about the Affordable Care Act and about the fact that they are going to have a chance to afford to have insurance, some of them for the first time in their lives. Even of those who have insurance, many of them will no longer have to worry about being denied because of preexisting conditions, worry about hitting a lifetime cap or about going bankrupt because of health care.

Well, Congressman, thank you for that question, and thank you for your work on this issue.

Madam Speaker, in the Senate bill that was passed recently, there is relief for students known as DREAMers, those who were brought here as young kids through no fault of their own and through no choice, and now find themselves undocumented, with no way, oftentimes, to go to college or to pursue their career dreams. These are folks who are literally in a kind of limbo.

And so what we should do is offer them a path to citizenship to allow them to become American citizens. This country is, after all, for the overwhelming majority of them, the only country they've ever called home. It's the only place they know as home; and this is an issue, I think, that tugs at the conscience of Americans.

And most polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans support a path to citizenship for DREAM Act students.

So I hope, Congressman Cardenas, that what we can do in the House of Representatives is follow the example of the Senate, work in a bipartisan manner, and offer relief for these DREAM Act students who are caught in limbo, who, through no fault of their own, are here in the United States of America, who call our country home, who are proud to be Americans, and who deserve a chance to become full-fledged citizens.

I would also point out, you know, as I said before, that there are very compelling moral and economic reasons to support comprehensive reform.

I represent San Antonio, Texas, here in Congress. And of all the States in the Nation, I believe that Texas has the most to gain or lose by what happens on this issue. The reason I say that is that we have the longest border with Mexico, for example, 1,200 miles.

We do the most trade with Latin America, and there are four or five major American industries and Texas industries, everything from the high-tech industry in Austin, just as you have one in California in Silicon Valley, to the agricultural industry, the construction industry, the hospitality industry. These major American industries literally would not exist the way they do but for immigrant labor.

And I want to give you the best example of that. The agricultural industry self-reports that 50 percent of its workers are undocumented. And so when States like Alabama and Georgia pass laws that essentially led immigrants to flee those States, their agricultural industries paid a very steep

price. So those are the stakes that we're dealing with on this issue.

I am hoping that House Republicans will join Democrats who have been pushing for comprehensive reform for quite some time now, join us in coming to a solution that does more than just incite fear or scare people, and actually tries to resolve this issue in a pragmatic way for the Nation.

First of all, thank you, Congressman, for your leadership on this issue and on this legislation Make It In America. Thank you to Congressman Delaney for all of the work that he's doing on infrastructure.

In Texas, infrastructure obviously is very important to us. We have a State that, obviously, is incredibly large in land mass, second only to Alaska. We have, for example, the most number of bridges of any State in the Nation, miles and miles of interstate highways and roads.

So I stand here tonight with you to reaffirm the point that we must never neglect our infrastructure of transportation; building out our roads, our highways, our waterways, our mass transit systems, making sure that Americans can get to where they want to go by air, by land, by sea. We must make sure that our infrastructure of transportation keeps up also and is competitive with that of places in Europe and in Asia, particularly for commercial purposes.

But also, Congressman, I wanted to point out that just as there is an infrastructure of transportation, there is in America another kind of infrastructure, and that is an infrastructure of opportunity that allows each of us to pursue our American Dreams. So, for example, just as there are streets and highways that help us get to where we want to go on the road, there is an infrastructure of opportunity in America that allows us to get to where we want to go in life. That infrastructure of opportunity would include, for example, great public schools and universities, a strong health care system in an economy that's built around well-paying jobs so that people can support themselves and their family members.

In fact, when we ask the question here in Congress: What is it that distinguishes America from among the nations of the world, I would argue that it is the fact that over the generations, Americans have come together to build out that infrastructure of opportunity that allows each of us, no matter our race, our class, where we come from, allows each of us to chase our American Dream.

I think all of us understand, and I think you would agree with me, I have never met any American who has asked for a guarantee of success in our Nation. Folks don't ask for a guarantee of success. What they ask for is the opportunity to pursue that success. So we must continue building not only the roads that we need and the highways, but also the great schools and universities, a strong health care system, and as you mentioned, with the American Jobs Act making sure that Americans can go to work and support themselves and their family.

I will just wrap up with this. There has been a lot of debate around here, and I know in the last hour there was, about immigration. There is a big debate about how to handle our immigration issue. That is a challenge and has been a challenge for this Congress.

But if you put aside the debate over what to do with folks who are here, whether it is visas or permanent legal residency, whatever it is, and we just ask ourselves, why is it for a few hundred years now that America has been the destination Nation for people from literally every corner of the Earth, why is that, I would argue it is because we have built up a place, a society of opportunity where people can pursue their dreams.

Congressman, I think you would agree with me, in all of the immigrants I've met, whether they came from Europe or Asia or Mexico or somewhere else, I've never heard anybody tell me that the reason they came to our country was because they were looking for the lowest corporate tax rate. People, in fact, come here because they are looking to be part of a system of opportunity that as Americans we have built up together. We must make sure, all of us in Congress, working as Republicans and Democrats united for our country, make sure that when somebody asks 50 years from now or 100 years from now, where is it on Earth that people want to be, that the answer is still ``the United States of America.'' We must build out the infrastructure of transportation and the infrastructure of opportunity to achieve that answer.

Thank you, Congressman.

I would point out, for example, in Texas, we have our challenges. In California, for example, you have nine research universities, which are the top-tier universities. In New York, they have about seven. In Texas, we only have three right now, so we have a long way to go to catch up.

We are trying to catch up. In fact, there was a bit of good news. Governor Perry today signed a bill that would merge two schools, two colleges, two universities, in what is known as the Texas Valley in south Texas, and ultimately will create a medical school.

That is very important for a few reasons. I want to use real quick this example in the Texas Valley in south Texas along the Texas-Mexico border, which is often in conversation here in Congress. It is a place of about between 1 million and 1\1/2\ million folks, very hardworking people, wake up early in the morning, go to work, put in a hard day's work without complaint, and then go home to their families, often go home and say prayers of thanks to God for what He has given them.

In that area known as the Texas Valley, cities like Edinburg and McAllen and Weslaco and Brownsville, did you know that you still can't get a medical degree anywhere in that area, anywhere south of San Antonio, my hometown? You can drive the 4 hours between San Antonio and the Texas-Mexico border and not be able to get a medical degree. You can't get a law degree anywhere between San Antonio and the Texas- Mexico border. And there are only a handful of Ph.D. programs.

So when I speak of missing pieces, literally, of the infrastructure, to me the Texas Valley is one example of that. I know many folks like Congressman Hinojosa, Congressman Cuellar, Congressman Vela, they're working very hard to change those things; but those changes have been slow in coming.

I will also point out with regard to the infrastructure of transportation, which is part of the infrastructure of opportunity, something that is also missing. For example, when you try to drive--my fiancee is from a small town called Alton, Texas, right near Mission, a few miles from the Texas-Mexico border--when you drive from San Antonio down to the Valley, you drive those 4 hours or so and there is no continuous interstate highway that you can take without stopping in town after town.

So you can imagine what that means to a traveler, but even more so what it means for commercial enterprises, for our businesses that are trying to do trade, trying to get their goods to Mexico, or importing their goods from Mexico. Those things are very, very important; and we've got to continue to do this great work that you've been a leader on.

Well, I've got a story tomorrow. I think I'm going to join the folks about immigration on the immigration issue and what I've learned visiting those places.

I think you're absolutely right on that. For example, Congressman Garamendi, last week, San Antonio received word that, in a year, our exports went up 33 percent. There was a 33 percent increase in exports.

In San Antonio. Coming from San Antonio. So these channels for getting our products to different markets are absolutely vital to continuing that success.

I think, Congressman, when we think about issues that come up here, issues that sometimes succumb to the gridlock that is Congress these days--for example, on the student loan issue--that's why it's so important that we make sure that we do right by students and not allow that student loan interest rate to double. In these tough economic times, it's hard enough for families to scrounge up the money to help send their kids to college and for the kids to work a job or two and go to class. They're often in this work-school tug-of-war where many of them work part-time or full-time and at the same time take their 15 hours or 12 hours to graduate in a decent number of years. The least that Congress can do is make sure that we set a student loan rate that is affordable and reasonable for the economic times that we live in.

Those things are not handouts. Those are investments to make sure that you've got a well-educated population. These are loans, after all. They're paying these back. It's also, I think, their government saying, Look, we're going to lend you this money at a decent rate--we're going to make sure it comes at a reasonable rate--and you're going to pay it back to us, but from that, we're going to get folks who are engineers, who are police officers and firefighters and doctors and all of the things that keep our society moving and keep this country the greatest Nation on Earth.

I couldn't agree more.

Just personally, I started college in the fall of 1992--21 years ago now. In 1991 or 1992, my mom made less than $20,000, and she was getting ready to send two twin sons--of course I have my brother--off to Stanford University in northern California. You can imagine how daunting that was, but there is no way that my brother and I could have gone to college and graduated without student loans--without Perkins loans, without Stafford loans. It was the same thing for law school. So these are vital. I mean, that's just my own story. There are literally millions of stories like that across the country.

That's right.

We know, of course, Congressman, that the sequester was taking a meat cleaver rather than trying to do real smart cuts, so I agree with you on that.

With respect to the work of the Army Corps of Engineers, the important work that they do, it is often felt in San Antonio and in Texas, of course, during everything that happened with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and all of the important work they had done around that. So you're right. I think that Americans expect that they will be in homes that are not going to flood and that there is going to be infrastructure in place to make sure that water doesn't come up and run them out of their homes and ruin their homes and their properties.

You make an important point about neglect of that infrastructure, not only with levees and with waterways, but you and I are both aware, as is the country, of the tragic examples over the last several years--in Minnesota, for example, in the bridge collapse, and more recently in Washington, I believe, in that bridge collapse. Those are lessons to this Congress that we cannot neglect our infrastructure. It is vital. I mentioned Texas. By that same report that Congressman Delaney mentioned, we have about 1,300 bridges that have been declared functionally obsolete. That's 1,300 functionally obsolete bridges in Texas. That's one in six. So those are things that we've got to attend to here.

It also begs the point: whether it's building out the infrastructure of transportation or building out the infrastructure of opportunity, that doesn't happen by itself. It doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by luck. The United States Government and the Congress must make those smart investments. We must continue to make those investments if we are going to be the land of opportunity not just 5 years from now or 20 years from now but 50 and 100 years from now.

Well, my Twitter, the House one, that's right. It should probably be JCastro.

I thank my friend, Mr. McGovern, for yielding.

I rise to speak today on sexual assault in the military and the need for justice and reform. This issue carries great significance for me, as I represent the area around Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.

The community in San Antonio, like communities across the country, was appalled to learn of the events that took place at Lackland. The sexual misconduct by military training instructors at Lackland has been one of the largest sexual misconduct scandals and investigations within the military. Similar stories have also surfaced from the academies to forward operating bases and now in the Pentagon.

When events like this occur, we must do two things: first, we must provide justice swiftly, and second, we must implement reforms to prevent future transgressions.

I'll continue to work with the committee to make sure that the recommendations for reform are implemented and serve as a model for the other branches of service.

This legislation does make progress in combating military sexual assault, but let us not forget that there is still much work to be done.

I thank my friend, Mr. McGovern, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Continued operation of the facility at Guantanamo weakens U.S. national security, wastes resources, damages our relationships with key allies, and reinforces anti-American propaganda led by groups like al Qaeda to recruit new enemies against the United States.

In a time of war, the Commander in Chief must have the flexibility to execute important foreign policy and national security determinations. This includes how to treat detainees captured on the battlefield. The Commander in Chief having this authority is not a new concept to this Congress. In fact, under President Bush, some 530 detainees were transferred from Gitmo with Congress' support. Restrictions placed by Congress to prevent this President from making these decisions are not prudent.

In addition to foreign policy and national security consideration, the facility at Guantanamo is also a waste of scarce resources. DOD estimates that the cost to run Guantanamo Bay is around $150 million a year. In a time when we're making sequestration cuts to programs here at home, we're spending approximately $1 million per detainee each year. This makes Guantanamo Bay literally the most expensive detention facility in the world.

I urge my colleagues to give the President the flexibility he needs to operate Guantanamo Bay.

Mr. Speaker, over the last 4 months, I have been proud to work towards building out what I have called the Infrastructure of Opportunity for our Nation. Recently, I had the opportunity to file legislation to reinforce one of the major cornerstones of that infrastructure: access to colleges and universities.

A few weeks ago, I filed the Student Aid Expansion Act of 2013 that will provide higher education students increased access to affordable financial aid. As we've all witnessed across our districts, the cost of tuition continues to rise. In Texas, for example, tuition and fees at public institutions have increased over 90 percent since 2003.

Meanwhile, students and families are left looking for ways to keep their higher education affordable. Over the last 10 years, we have seen students rely more heavily on loans to finance their education. Fifty- two percent of direct student aid now comes in the form of loans.

The Student Aid Expansion Act of 2013 would remove barriers that are currently preventing our institutions of higher education from promoting affordable, State-based alternatives. These types of loans are zero interest and can be fully forgiven if a student does well in school. Importantly, this legislation will not cost Federal, State, or local governments a single dime.

Today I'd like to take a moment to honor the life of Demetrio P. Rodriguez, a great American we lost earlier this week in my hometown of San Antonio. Demetrio passed away at the age of 87 after a long and rewarding life, a life that literally transformed public education in Texas and across the Nation.

Demetrio, like many of the folks who grew up on the west side of San Antonio, was a humble man. Born into a migrant farm-working family, he served in the Navy and later in the Air Force Reserve, and he worked for years at Kelly Air Force Base.

In 1968, with 15 other parents, he led the charge to change the way we do school finance, not only in Texas, but in the United States of America. He objected to the fact that property-poor districts were so far outspent and given much more money than property-rich districts in Texas. He led that charge.

In 1973, the Supreme Court said that education wasn't a fundamental right, but he didn't give up the fight. And in 1989, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the children of Texas should have an equal education, no matter their income.

He was a great man. He'll be sorely missed. He was a fighter and a champion of people.

Today on April 9, we recognize Equal Pay Day, symbolizing the more than 3 months into this year that women have to work in order for their wages to finally catch up to what their male colleagues earned last year.

Nearly 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act to protect workers from gender-based discrimination.

Despite the hard work of countless folks to make pay equality a reality, women today still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men doing the same kind of work. For women of color, the wage gap is even larger.

Clearly, as a Nation, we have more work to do. That's why I'm a proud cosponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would reenforce the Equal Pay Act by closing loopholes and protecting employees from unfair retaliation.

Twice now Democrats have passed this legislation in the House of Representatives only to have it blocked by Senate Republicans.

Equal pay is not a partisan issue. And it's not only a women's issue. This is about America's founding principles of justice for all.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to bring this important legislation before the House for a full vote.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to speak in opposition to the inaction on the sequester.

These across-the-board budget cuts are the direct result of hostage politics, another self-inflicted wound that sabotages our efforts to build out the infrastructure of opportunity in America for so many hardworking and humble people. Inaction should not be an option.

In Texas, this body's inaction will be felt almost immediately. Nearly 100,000 Texans could lose their jobs. Texas schools stand to lose almost $70 million, putting nearly 1,000 educators out of work and countless children at risk of a disrupted education. More than 50,000 of the folks supporting our military, many of them veterans themselves, could lose 20 percent of their pay in the next year.

The President and Democrats have offered a balanced solution to stop the sequester and reduce our deficit below the historic average. Mr. Speaker, I urge you to allow these proposals to come before the full House. Our communities deserve good-faith action from Congress.