Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Donna Hoffer as she retires after more than thirty years of faithful, dedicated service to Southeast Michigan. As she retires at the end of this year, I honor and recognize her dedication, passion, and hard work in service to the Southeast Michigan, and the people I have served since 1982.

In 1982 Monroe County became part of my Congressional District. I asked the community's leadership for recommendation of a fine and committed civil servant. Donna Hoffer was unanimously recommended and she joined the staff, managing the Monroe district office for 29 years. She competently and astutely served the community as my representative, in addition to handling a complex variety of casework including Social Security matters, of which she is an expert. When redistricting occurred and I lost Monroe County, Donna stayed on, serving well in our Ypsilanti office.

Donna's loyalty to the office and steadfast dedication in her service to the District has stood out through the years, and it has no bounds. Just recently, Donna played an instrumental role in having a lung transplant denial overturned, giving another chance at life to a desperate constituent. Donna has been a critical part of my staff and I am honored that she has spent her career serving the people of my Congressional District.

I extend my congratulations and best wishes to Donna in her retirement and hope that she enjoys the time with her husband, Mick, their two children and four grandchildren. I sincerely thank her for the loyal years she has given in service to Southeast Michigan. She is a dear friend and is the kind of public servant who brings credit on our Government with her faithful and dedicated effort on the behalf of the people we are honored to serve.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.J. Res. 59.

While this legislation is far from perfect, I will reluctantly support it. It is a small step forward towards funding our government and giving the American people a degree of certainty. In addition, I believe that the bipartisan and bicameral fashion in which it was crafted is a path that we absolutely must pursue in order to move this country forward. I remind my colleagues that compromise is not a dirty word; rather it is the cornerstone of our democracy.

Again, this measure is not perfect. I have genuine and very serious concerns regarding certain aspects of the bill, namely a lack of extension of unemployment benefits, its changes to aspects of pension contributions of Federal employees, as well as its revision of cost-of- living calculations for military retirees.

But I cannot allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and I thus will support this compromise in order to move this measure forward and continue the much needed debate over what we must do to keep our government up and running and best serving the American people. The legislation also includes a three-month fix of the Sustainable Growth Rate, and it remains my hope that this will allow us enough time to work towards a permanent, bipartisan solution.

While House Republicans have already put the solvency of our Nation's finances in turmoil this year by putting politics ahead of people and shutting down our government for seventeen days in October, I believe we must not allow that to happen again, and Senator Murray and Representative Ryan have taken this small but productive step towards doing just that today. It is my hope that Majority Leader Reid will have the Senate take up this legislation--including an extension of emergency unemployment benefits--before December 28 in order to prevent some 1.3 million Americans from losing their benefits just one week after Christmas.

At its core, this compromise is a step in the right direction to averting the harmful effects of the sequester, restoring a degree of economic certainty, and beginning to return this Congress to a time where crossing the aisle was rightly seen as an admirable and necessary act to bring about compromise, tackle the great issues of the day, and best serve the proud people of this Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2019, the Kids First Research Act. This among the most hypocritical bills I have seen during my time in Congress, and it should be rejected. My friends on the other side of the aisle say this bill will increase pediatric research funding at the National Institutes of Health, when in fact it does nothing of the sort. Furthermore, their record demonstrates that they have little interest in actually funding life-saving medical research for children.

This legislation does not give NIH a single dollar to spend on pediatric research. Instead, it only provides an authorization for future funding to be provided by the Appropriations Committee. The unfortunate fact is this funding is still subject to sequestration which has resulted in $1.55 billion being cut from NIH during fiscal year 2013. Therefore, this bill does not increase spending at NIH at all. It seems this is nothing more than a distraction to confuse people about the terrible record the GOP has on this issue.

Since my friends on the other side of the aisle have been in the majority, NIH funding has decreased by $4.2 billion, or 13 percent. Furthermore, the funding allocation provided to the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee for fiscal year 2014 is 22 percent below the enacted level, meaning more cuts are coming. The small, $16 million authorization that this bill provides will do nothing to reverse the damage that these policies have had on medical research across our country.

If my Republican colleagues are serious about helping children and, promoting medical research, they should work with Democrats in a bipartisan manner to repeal sequestration and replace it with sensible spending cuts, rather than allowing these damaging cuts to NIH to continue. NIH does not need another meaningless authorization that goes unfunded, they need actual dollars that go to research. I find it hard to believe that my friends on the other side of the aisle truly care about funding pediatric research when their record demonstrates just the opposite. I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing this cynical legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Barry Sullivan, Director of the Democratic Cloakroom, who has announced his plans to retire after decades of service here in the House. His presence in this chamber and his years of hard work on behalf of House Democrats will be sorely missed. I have been blessed to be here throughout Barry's career and to see first-hand his contribution to this body and to our Nation. I was honored to work alongside Congressman Joseph Moakley, who served as a mentor to Barry and helped advance his career. He's a proud son of South Boston, and I wish him and his family the absolute best for a long and happy retirement. Thank you, Barry, for your 33 years of service on behalf of and for the people of our great Nation. God bless you.

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

Mr. Chairman, this bill is a solution desperately searching for a problem.

In July of 2013, before the committee, Commissioner Moeller said that 90 percent of permit applications to FERC are already approved within 12 months and that the delays on the remaining 10 percent are due to either the complexities of the proposed projects or incomplete applications, something which indicates there is hardly a need for the amendment. In addition to that statement, there has been no record of any backlog of permit applications that justifies the need to overhaul pipeline permitting regulations.

There is an old saying, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I am curious as to why it is we are trying to fix something here that is not broken.

I am worried that, if this legislation were to somehow become law, we would already see that the agencies and the courts, in their consideration, would rush around to try and figure out what it was the Congress intended and how these matters could or should be proceeded upon more expeditiously. That, according to the government agencies that appeared before the committee, is completely unnecessary.

Having said these things, I would like to call to the attention of my colleagues here that the amendment that I offer today simply directs the GAO to take another look at the permitting process and to take into consideration these issues to tell us what it is that needs to be done to better expedite the process.

Why this? The reason is very simple. The committee had one day of hearing, had very little support for the legislation, no explanation of why it was needed, the agencies appearing before the committee said it really wasn't necessary, and other witnesses testified that it wasn't needed.

The report of the GAO will identify the problems which exist, and we can then use the oversight authority of the committee and the Congress to fix such problems as might be found and have an intelligent record as to what can, or should, be done to make this a step which, in fact, will help us move forward on pipeline permitting.

Now, I want to make it very clear I am not opposed to natural gas pipelines, nor am I opposed to moving forward speedily and intelligently. The system is working, the Congress has devised a system of permitting that works, sees to it that safety is properly attended to, and has given proper oversight, including legislation recently to ensure that proper behavior and proper safety of the pipelines do take place.

I urge the committee to support my amendment. It gives us a bill of which we can be proud, instead of a bill about which people are going to scratch their heads and wonder what was the Congress doing when they foisted this miserable thing upon us.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, this legislation is unnecessary. Every witness before the committee found no reason why it had to be enacted into law. It was made very clear that there have been no incidences of egregious delay by any events before the permitting authorities. There is no need for the legislation.

The amendment is a friendly amendment offered to enable us to find out if there are, in fact, problems; and if there are, in fact, problems, then we will be able to take the necessary action to correct whatever problems might exist.

At this particular time, there is no evidence of need for the legislation. In 90 percent of the time, the permits have been granted within the 1-year period. It is only necessary to allow time for others where the permitting application was incorrectly or improperly done and only where the complexity of the situation requires more time.

What I am hearing from the other side is they feel that there is need for us to move more rapidly in these complex cases where serious mistakes can be made and we can have the danger of an unsafe pipeline resulting.

I would remind my colleagues that a pipeline explosion, only the failure of a gas pipeline, is like a nuclear event.

I urge the adoption of the amendment, and if not adopted, the rejection of the legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chairman, I rise first to pay respects to the distinguished gentleman on the majority side handling the legislation to tell him that I have affection and respect for him, but he is handling a bad bill. I also want to thank my good friend for yielding me this time.

I have been to Alaska many times. I have hunted there. I have fished there. I have been to the NPR-A. I have been to all of the refuges in the national forests and national parks and the BLM lands up there. I have seen what a treasure it is. I have also supported, actively, the idea that this Nation must make it possible for us to easily produce energy, but not at the price of throwing away things like our basic fundamental environmental protection laws.

This legislation is not going to significantly increase production of oil. All it is going to do is throw away the things that are necessary to protect it against unwise use. This has been a battle that we have had in this body many times, where the majority will consistently seek to make it easier to drill for oil that either isn't there or isn't there in the amounts or that is not going to be produced by the oil companies, because we are finding that there is a lot of oil where there is authorization for drilling where they just got the drilling permits and they sit there and look at the drilling permits. Oil is not produced.

Having said this, the Secretary in the last year or so has increased the ability of this Nation to continue producing more and more oil from the public lands. One of the problems with Alaska is the public lands are cold, they are intractable, they are harsh, and they are hard to produce oil from; so it is necessary that it takes longer for us to produce oil on those lands, and that is properly so. It is easy to produce it in the warmer, more gentle climates here in the United States. Given that fact, we can expect that we will see more rapid increases in production here than we will see up there.

We have a tremendous national treasure in Alaska. It produces fish, wildlife, open spaces, salmon, all kinds of riches of renewable resources of all kinds.

I express my thanks to my dear friend.

Madam Chairwoman, we should not throw away those protections, nor should we open those lands up to being blasted, drilled, ditched, and dug without wise protection. After all, good conservation is wise conservation and wise use of the resources.

We are going to find, as time passes, the predictions of our Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior, that this oil is not present in NPR-A and in the arctic game range and is not there in the amounts that we would like, and there is no real reason for increasing that oil production, especially by permits that will not yield any additional production of oil to this Nation.

I urge my colleagues to reject the legislation. Let the administration continue its production of oil according to wise use and see to it that we protect the treasures that we have in Alaska against unwise use.

I thank my friend for yielding me this time, and I express great affection and respect for my dear friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), who serves the House and his constituents well.

However, Mr. Speaker, this is a regrettable piece of legislation. It is nothing more or less than the kind of insurance policies, which are being authorized by it, that were sold by snake oil salesmen around this country, policies which gave no relief, no help, and no benefit to the American people.

The sad situation is that this not only allows some people to keep their policies, but it allows a lot of snake oil salesmen to run around the country, selling bad policies which undo almost all of the protections which we have put into the Affordable Care Act, things like protections against preexisting conditions or the fact that a woman who might be buying a policy can be charged more under this legislation on a new policy issued by some sneaky insurance company.

The harsh fact of the matter is that this is not a help to citizens. The President said yesterday that he was going to take steps to correct the problems. If we really want to have this done properly, then that is the way to do it. Let us work together to have these matters corrected properly. Let us see to it that the American people get the protections they need against abusive practices and not that we return to them.

H.R. 3350 allows the new sales of bad policies--which contain programs and practices that are barred by ACA--to new and gullible purchasers, the ones whom we say we seek to protect. As I observed yesterday, the insurance companies feel that this is going to cause huge confusion in the market, and they do not seek this legislation. The average citizen has been sold a bill of lading which is just plainly false. He is not going to be benefited by H.R. 3350. He is simply going to be afforded the opportunity to buy bad policies, whereas what we want to do is see to it that if he has his policy he can keep it. The hard fact of the matter is that he can keep it, and he doesn't need the legislation before us.

The legislation before us simply assures that folks can run around selling bad policies under fictional and false misrepresentations to do hurt to the American people, who, frankly, need protection against the abuses that the Affordable Care Act would put in place.

Mr. Speaker, well, here we go again. The House is taking up another bill that seeks to gut the Dodd-Frank Act. H.R. 2374's authors purport that the bill is meant to protect investors. But its practical effect would be just the opposite. The bill would impose onerous--and unnecessary--new requirements on the Securities and Exchange Commission from imposing a common fiduciary standard on broker-dealers and investment advisers alike. Dodd-Frank directed that the Commission study this matter, and it did. The Commission found it necessary in a 2011 report and stands ready, willing, and able to complete a rulemaking. What's worse is that the bill would also prevent the Department of Labor from moving forward with a fiduciary duty rulemaking for employee benefit plans until after the Commission has acted. In the simplest of terms, the Commission's and Department of Labor's common intention with these rulemakings is to protect investors. H.R. 2374's practical effect would be to prevent both from doing so.

This is another example of not having learned the lessons of the past. Investor abuses in part precipitated the 2008 financial crisis. Passing H.R. 2374 would be a terrible step backward and a validation of the practices that nearly brought this country to its knees. The financial services industry is in no way, shape, or form deserving of this type of deregulation. Vote this bill down, and stand up for the financial security of American investors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 99.

My Republican colleagues can't help themselves. It wasn't enough that they nearly caused a global economic meltdown by forcing the government to close and stonewalling an increase in the debt limit earlier this month. Now they want to do it all over again by revoking the President's authority to raise the debt limit, which Congress granted him in a bipartisan manner. Republicans in the House aren't just welshing on that compromise, but they're also signaling their intention to take the country over the brink again, all to score political points.

This is a farcical exercise and one undeserving of this body's consideration. I would hope that early October's nightmare taught us a lesson or two, but it appears that some of my colleagues haven't learned a thing. All of this boils down to a simple question: Do you support preventing a catastrophic worldwide economic calamity that will decimate the lives of your constituents? If so, then vote down H.J. Res. 99.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 992, the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act.

Part of the problem that led to the 2008 financial meltdown was that banks were taking huge risks by exposing themselves to risky swaps and derivatives. We passed the Dodd-Frank Act in part to address this problem by forcing depository institutions to spin off their swaps and derivatives activities to separately capitalized affiliates. H.R. 992, if passed, would nullify that part of Dodd-Frank and again allow banks to engage in the type of reckless behavior that caused the gravest economic calamity since the Great Depression.

Voting in favor of H.R. 992 is tantamount to unlearning the lessons of the recent past. I find it absolutely appalling that five years on, we're considering legislation to permit the very type of bad behavior that necessitated the Dodd-Frank Act in the first place. I urge my colleagues to vote down H.R. 992, if only out of good common sense.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to say thanks to my good friend from Florida for yielding me this time.

I urge that the rule be rejected. There is no reason why we can't have an opportunity to amend this legislation to address some of its failures. As the author of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, I was proud to usher in a new era of environmental and wildlife conservation. Moreover, NEPA passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, by a vote of 372-15. A similar vote took place in the Senate. During the debate on NEPA, I noted:

Mankind is playing an extremely dangerous game with his

environment. We have not yet learned that we must consider

the natural environment as a whole and to assess its quality

continuously if we really wish to make strides in improving,

preserving, and protecting it.

NEPA has a very simple promise: look before leaping. The law ensures that Federal agencies weigh the environmental consequences of development projects before they are undertaken. This bill puts its finger in the eye of that particular approach. I worry that the provisions included in the bill before us today will lead us down a path going back to those days of impunity and disregard for the well- being and concerns of the public, where actions were taken without any full appreciation or understanding of the environmental impact of that.

That was the reason NEPA was passed, so that we would know what we were doing, and so that we would have a fair opportunity for people to participate in the judgments by having these decisions made in an open and a transparent fashion. Now perhaps changes are needed, and perhaps an update, if you will. We cannot say that this legislation does that. However, before we make changes, we need to have some comprehensive hearings in the committee of jurisdiction. I note that the committee that brings this legislation to the floor is not necessarily the committee of jurisdiction.

This is a proposal which is disregarding one of the things which was said by President Nixon when he signed it. He said that this was going to stop the decay of the environment. We are renewing that decay.

I thank my dear friend from Massachusetts.

As I begin, I express my great affection and respect for my colleague from Texas, who is my dear friend.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are here to be ashamed of ourselves. We're wasting the taxpayers' time, the taxpayers' money, and we're wasting the business and the time of the House.

We are taking up a bill to require that Members of Congress sit down and talk about deficit reduction and raising the debt limit. The last time I checked, we didn't need a law to do that. It's already our job. We have a conference that we can call at any time between the House and the Senate, which would enable us then to get to the serious business in handling this matter under the regular order. We don't do it. I don't know why.

The President says he is not going to negotiate with a gun at his head. Frankly, I wouldn't either, and I don't think anybody else in this place would. Beyond that, he also is not going to negotiate the full faith and credit of the United States, which is one of the questions at issue.

So one of the problems we seem to have with our Republican friends is that their Tea Party fringe is so ideologically hell-bent in getting their way that they're finding that they're too extreme to get it.

Now, we Democrats have shown a willingness to cooperate and to compromise. In fact, as the minority leader observed, we have asked Speaker Boehner to convene a budget conference all year, but to no avail.

Two hundred Democrats, including myself, sent a letter to Speaker Boehner on Saturday, saying we'd support an extension of sequester- level spending through November 15. Democrats don't want the sequester to begin with, but the interest of compromise and keeping government open says that we're going to show good faith to my Republican colleagues.

And what is my Republican colleagues' response?

No. Resurrect the failed supercommittee. They have apparently read the Peter Principle, which says, when you can't think of anything else to do, appoint a committee, and they will obfuscate the matter further.

Mr. Speaker, it's time to put an end to these asinine antics and maneuverings. It's time to pass the Senate continuing resolution. It's time to show the Americans and the rest of the world that a great institution, created by an enormously wise group of men who made the United States Constitution, is an institution that is not beyond hope of redemption and that it can work together.

We offered to work together with my Republican friends and colleagues. We hope that they will do this.

I would simply observe that we are engaged here in another curious practice also. We're going to have it so that we're going to pay Federal workers for doing nothing. Imagine that.

My Republican colleagues, over the years, during my career here, have always been complaining about ``welfare queens'' who would ride to the welfare office to get their pension checks. Well, here we are going to convert a bunch of Federal employees to ``welfare queens'' by paying them while they do not work. The whole thing is silly, and the American people feel so.

Mr. Speaker, here we are again wasting the people's time. But I want each and every one of my colleagues to know that we're wasting their money, too. Seventeen years ago, Republicans shut down the government for 27 days. In today's dollars, that cost American taxpayers $2 billion. For all the high-handed talk by my Republican friends about reducing deficits, they seem to have no problem with trying to score political points at the expense of hard-working American families.

This afternoon, we're going to take up the same cut-and-bite bills that the House rejected last night. We find ourselves hoping for a different outcome by doing the same thing over and over again. I'd like to remind my friends that this is the definition of insanity. On top of that, Republicans are using the World War II Memorial closure and veterans to try to shame us into going along with their charade. I'm one of two World War II vets left in this place, and

I can tell you that the best way to honor and help this country's veterans is to get the whole government running again.

Mr. Speaker, I call on my Republican colleagues to gather the collective will to do the work the people expect of them. They are putting the economic well-being of this country at severe risk, which is beneath contempt. Enough of acting like spoiled children: It's time to be adults and get this country moving again. The responsible choice here is to get together and pass a funding resolution for the ENTIRE government. The American people demand nothing less.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for the time.

One of my colleagues yesterday said, You've seen it worse, haven't you? Well, I've only been here 57 years, and I never have.

I've never seen such small-minded, miserable behavior in this House of Representatives and such a disregard of our responsibilities to the people. We're supposed to solve the problems of the people. We're supposed to deal with the concerns they have. We're supposed to see to it that the Nation prospers. None of that is being done. The American people could get better government out of the monkey island in the local zoo than we're giving them today.

I'm embarrassed and I'm humiliated. I certainly hope that my colleagues on both sides--especially on the Republican side--are embarrassed.

This is going to cost us huge amounts of money. It's going to waste money in an amount which will exceed that which we saw wasted during the last time the Republicans shut the House down. They shut it down in 1995 and 1996. In today's dollars, it cost $2 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. This shutdown is no different. It's going to end up not only costing money, but hurting the economy, hurting jobs, and hurting the American recovery.

During the last shutdown, we lost huge amounts of revenue through the IRS, EPA, and other agencies. Passport applications were not processed, which meant even more revenue was lost. National parks, battlefields, and monuments were closed.

Now we're going to pass a budget with hit-and-miss legislation and the subjugate people are going to think that in some quaint way we're solving the Nation's problems.

We are called the Congress. That means coming together. I see no coming together here. I see a waste of time, a waste of money, and a behavior of a bunch of people who look small, petulant, and small- minded.

I'm embarrassed. I hope my colleagues are embarrassed. And the American people are not only embarrassed; they're being hurt by the shameless, miserable behavior that we're demonstrating today in this Chamber and on the television to the Nation.

Let's get down to business. Let's pass a continuing resolution. Let's do our responsibilities. Let's behave as a Congress of the United States, not an aggregation of petulant children.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. It's not perfect, but it is a huge stride forward.

It represents a major step in securing our pharmaceutical supply chain and improving FDA's authority to oversee compounding pharmacies. It also is done under a bipartisan, bicameral, cooperative, and enthusiastic effort by Members on both sides of the aisle and of the Capitol working together.

It addresses the problems of the deadly fungal meningitis outbreak of several years ago, which were traced to lots of supposedly sterile steroid injections made at the New England Compounding Center. There were 264 cases of fungal meningitis in my home State and 19 deaths. This will address that concern in a very excellent way.

It also sees to it that FDA and the States are able to cooperate together, have better funding and more authority over compounding pharmacies. It also does something else, which is very important: it sees to it that now we can track and trace pharmaceuticals through the channels of trade, a very important need. And it is for the first time going to see to it that Americans are able to address their concerns about the safety of pharmaceuticals in these important areas.

I want to thank Chairman Upton for his leadership, Ranking Member Waxman, Representatives Pallone, Matheson, DeGette, Latta, Pitts, and Griffith, and my good friend, Mr. Green, for their hard work on this legislation. I hope that we can quickly send this legislation to the President's desk for signature.

Now just one thought: why is it that on legislation of this kind, this body can work together, and we are not capable of dealing with massive problems like government shutdowns and dealing with continuing resolutions? Perhaps maybe a little bit of informed, intelligent behavior by this House on other matters would be in order.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore