Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life of my constituent and neighbor, Mr. Thomas Charles Braun. A beloved artist, activist, family man, and small business owner, Mr. Braun passed away in October 2018. I join my neighbors in recognizing the tremendous gifts he gave to our community.

Born in Lake City, Minnesota, Mr. Braun was always an artistic and passionate person. After getting his degree in theater from Lawrence University, Mr. Braun taught theater at Lea College, Ekerd College, and Normandale Community College. He inspired countless young adults through his commitment to fun and daring productions before he left academia to run Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis in 1988.

Consistently recognized as one of the most inventive bookstores nationwide, Wild Rumpus is symbolic of the type of person Mr. Braun was--open and inviting, passionate about having fun, and always up for trying something new and mischievous. Under his devoted management, the store garnered national awards, including being named Bookstore of the Year by Publisher's Weekly in 2017. As described in his obituary, `One never really ``worked for'' Tom. Rather, you became a co-conspirator in his sense of mischief and philosophy of ``why not?'' '

But Mr. Braun was passionate not only about light-hearted ventures. He founded Linden Hills Power & Light, an organization that fights for climate action on the grassroots level. They were a key constituency pushing for citywide door-to-door compost collection, spearheading the first pilot program with the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County. Mr. Braun's drive to model the world he wanted to see through his own choices and actions was a driving force for some of our most important city-wide sustainability efforts.

Though Mr. Braun is no longer with us, the impact he has made on our community will be visible for years to come. I am grateful that he gave us so much of his energy and vision, and that he created lasting organizations that will continue to model his commitment to being a good person, doing right by his neighbors, and fighting for a better world. I thank Mr. Braun for all that he has given to Minnesota.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Betsy Hodges' honorable service to the City of Minneapolis.

During her time as Mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges advanced environmental justice, transforming policing and safety, and closing racial and economic disparities, including among our youngest children. Through her inspiring vision of ``One Minneapolis,'' she reoriented the work of the City of Minneapolis and changed the citywide conversation to put racial equity at the core of both.

Mayor Hodges pushed Minneapolis to be one of the greenest cities in America, extending organics recycling to every neighborhood, developing a Zero Waste Minneapolis plan, winning incentives to keep pollutants out of our air and water, and pursuing environmental justice. Under Mayor Hodges' leadership, Minneapolis was named a Climate Champion city by the White House and won a coveted 100 Resilient Cities designation from the Rockefeller Foundation. Pope Francis recognized Mayor Hodges' and Minneapolis' leadership in fighting climate change when he invited her to the Vatican for a convening of world mayors that he hosted.

Because of Mayor Hodges' leadership, the City passed historic measures to help working people, including a $15 municipal minimum wage with no tip penalty, and earned sick and safe time for everyone who works in Minneapolis, both of which were firsts in the state of Minnesota. Mayor Hodges laid a strong foundation for transforming the city's policing, including implementing the use of body cameras, reforming the municipal criminal-justice system, and appointing Minneapolis' first African American chief of police. She also assembled a groundbreaking Cradle to K Cabinet that developed a plan to prevent racial disparities for our youngest children.

Minneapolis continued to grow under Mayor Hodges' tenure: in each of her four years as Mayor, the City experienced more than $1 billion in private growth, without public subsidy. The long-planned renovation of Nicollet Mall was completed on time and on budget, the City-owned Target Center was renovated at one quarter of the cost of building a new arena, and Minneapolis won both Super Bowl LII and the NCAA Final Four. Mayor Hodges fully funded a first-ever, 20-year tourism master plan for Minneapolis to build on these successes into the future.

Mayor Hodges also made significant investments in Minneapolis' infrastructure: a historic and fiscally responsible 20-year, $800 million investment in the City's parks and streets, along with full funding for Orange Line Bus Rapid Transit and a network of protected bike lanes that contribute to Minneapolis' continuing to be the best bike city in America. She also made significant investments in affordable housing, including for families facing homelessness.

Mayor Hodges' nation-leading work was also recognized with a coveted Promise Zone designation for North Minneapolis, several significant federal grants to support Minneapolis' 21st-century policing efforts, a highly competitive Mayor's Innovation Grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to support racial-equity work, and with Minneapolis' participation in the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice.

Under Mayor Hodges' leadership, Minneapolis remained a well-run city. Mayor Hodges passed and presented four structurally balanced budgets that continued the foundation of fiscal responsibility that she laid while a Council Member and reoriented the work of the City around racial equity. Mayor Hodges' commitment to equity extended to hiring in her own office, where she hired half women and half people of color, including the first Somali-American and the first openly transgender person ever to work in the Mayor's office.

As an openly sober person and an open survivor of childhood sexual assault, Mayor Hodges has consistently given of her time to help more people than we will ever know find their own path to healing and has actively supported them in the process.

Before serving as Mayor, Betsy Hodges had an outstanding career in public service. As the Ward 13 City Council Member for eight years, she chaired the Ways & Means/Budget Committee and worked successfully for years to reform the City's closed-pension system that was unfair to taxpayers and pensioners alike. Mayor Hodges worked as an organizer in the non-profit sector for TakeAction MN and for the Minnesota Justice Foundation, and helped found the Women's Health Project in New Mexico to assist HIV-positive women. She also worked as an aide for Hennepin County Commissioner Gail Dorfman.

Mayor Hodges is also known for her sense of humor, as well as for her love of Wonder Woman, the movie ``Die Hard,'' giraffes, and Oxford commas.

Mayor Betsy Hodges' years of leadership and activism have shaped Minneapolis and Minnesota for the better. She has made a positive impact on the lives of so many, one that will be felt for decades to come. I would like to commend and thank her for her many contributions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Barbara Johnson who represented the Fourth Ward of Minneapolis for 20 years, serving as the Council President for the last 12 years. Johnson became the longest-serving Council President in Minneapolis history.

Johnson's accomplishments as a Council Member and as Council President were extensive. She made public safety and the health of the Fourth Ward one of her main priorities, serving on the Public Safety & Health Committee and the Hennepin County Criminal Justice Coordination Committee. She assisted in crime prevention through job training and youth programs. As a registered nurse, Johnson was passionate about the growing healthcare sector in Minneapolis and supported using a public health approach to public safety.

Johnson was passionate about constituent service, always willing to pick up the phone to help get a pothole filled. She helped support local businesses in the neighborhood, including the opening of the North Market grocery store, and businesses across Minneapolis with projects like the Midtown Global Market. She also spearheaded an effort to merge the Hennepin County and Minneapolis library systems.

Johnson has a strong interest in parks and the environment. She served for 18 years on the Metropolitan Park & Open Space Commission, and served on the Mississippi National River & Recreation Area Commission. She helped negotiate a 20-year parks and street maintenance agreement that passed in 2016. She supported the development of the Webber Natural Swimming Pool. She also worked with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to reduce pollution on the Northside.

Prior to her elected service, Johnson was a founding member of the Victory Neighborhood Association (VINA) and was the Chair from 1994 to 1997.

Johnson's experience, hard work, and leadership has made a lasting mark on Ward 4 and across our community. I want to thank Barbara Johnson for her exceptional 20 years of public service and her dedication to the City of Minneapolis.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Elizabeth Glidden's 12 years of service as a Minneapolis Councilmember. She has served as a distinguished leader on the Council, including as the Council Vice President, and Chair of the Intergovernmental Relations Committee.

Ms. Glidden has an extensive list of accomplishments from her time in office. She has been an advocate for workers' protection, helping lead the push for a $15 municipal minimum wage and for paid sick and safe leave to provide job protections to up to 100,000 Minneapolis workers during illness. She is a champion for affordable housing, and was the chief author of the 2017 Minneapolis ordinance that prohibited discrimination against the 5,000 Minneapolis holders of Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers.

Ms. Glidden led the pioneering effort to bring ranked choice voting to Minneapolis in 2006 to help avoid plurality outcomes and elect majority winners. It has since been used successfully in three Minneapolis elections.

A proponent of clean energy, she created the first-in-the-nation Clean Energy Partnership between Minneapolis and energy utilities to help promote energy efficiency and renewable energy in support of the city's Climate Action Plan.

Ms. Glidden helped direct city efforts on racial equity, including the development of One Minneapolis One Read, a reading program to encourage family and friends to have conversations about race, family relationships, and neighborhood history.

In addition to her contributions on the Council, she previously worked for ten years as an attorney practicing employment and civil rights law. Ms. Glidden has been a Board Member of Local Progress, a Board Member of Gender Justice, and serves on the Alumni Board of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Ms. Glidden is set to continue her advocacy on behalf of the residents of Minneapolis and Minnesota as the new Director of Strategic Initiatives and Policy for the Minnesota Housing Partnership.

On behalf of her Ward 8 constituents and the broader community, I want to congratulate Elizabeth Glidden on her many years advancing creative change for the City of Minneapolis, and on her tireless activism as a voice for equity, justice, and economic opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I, along with so many Americans, looked on with great shock as we saw the President capitulate to Vladimir Putin. It was truly a stunning and worrisome moment for me.

In fact, in that European trip, the President insulted our allies and then openly embraced a man who attacked our democracy, invaded and annexed other countries, and authorized lethal attacks on his political enemies and other countries.

Yet the President still embraced him.

It is a moment of alarm for the whole Nation, but it is important to note that there is something we can do about it, as the President has also urged the U.S. Congress to eliminate funding for the Election Assistance Commission.

This is very serious because we know that Russia assisted in the hacking and attack of over 21 States' election systems. The President may not be concerned, but Congress ought to be.

Unfortunately, today we expect to have a vote in which we are voting on a bill that eliminates the funding of the Election Assistance Commission. This should be rejected, as we should reject the President's failure to stand up for our values.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of the bipartisan legislation, SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (H.R. 6). This legislation includes several provisions which would improve access to health care and treatment services for low-income and at-risk Minnesotans.

In particular, I support allowing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe treatment for opioid use disorder, and increasing providers who can prescribe buprenorphine. These policies are particularly important for those living with addiction in Greater Minnesota and urban areas facing shortages or lack in treatment facilities and physicians. The legislation also includes provisions that ensure foster and incarcerated youth are covered under Medicaid and do not experience gaps in coverage and care.

I am committed to ensuring prevention and substance use treatment programs are properly funded, and all Americans have access to the services they need to live a sustainable and healthy life. We need solutions to these problems facing some of the most vulnerable Americans, and although H.R. 6 doesn't address all the issues we face in this crisis, it is a step in the right direction. However, Congress must continue to fund programs to support all communities impacted by the opioid epidemic.

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

Mr. Speaker, this bill would strengthen cooperation between financial institutions and law enforcement to better combat terrorism and financial crime by providing a narrow safe harbor from BSA/AML--that is Bank Secrecy Act and Anti-Money Laundering, that is the acronym-- scrutiny of financial institutions that keep a customer account open at the written request of Federal and State law enforcement.

This cooperation will enable law enforcement agencies to follow the money in the bank accounts of terrorists, human traffickers, corrupt officials, and those involved in organized crime.

We support this. This is a commonsense, bipartisan bill, and I urge support.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Arkansas and the bipartisan group that came together to make this passage of The Credit Access and Inclusion Act possible.

Mr. Speaker, let me just ask you, and anyone, a question. If you could help millions of people get access to an apartment, get a lower- cost loan, a lower phone or utility deposit all without creating a new government program, without spending any government money, without a government mandate, and virtually no new tax dollars, would you take that deal?

I think that is a good deal. This is what we are proposing here. I know I would take that deal.

Mr. Speaker, I am urging all Members to vote in favor of the passage of The Credit Access and Inclusion Act, because that is what it would do simply by saying we are going to use all the data that consumers rely on now that is not necessarily credit related but does show that they pay their bills to be included in the construction of that credit score.

That is why I am proud to be here today, because the passage of this bipartisan Credit Access and Inclusion Act is going to help Americans be more successful in this economy. It will reward people who pay their utility and their phone bills on time, because it is important to note that when those bills are not paid on time, they are already reported.

People get credit, under this bill, for the bills that they pay on time, and still are able and in a position to be able to get perhaps lower interest rates, get lower deposits they have to put down, and be able to lead more prosperous economic lives.

This bill is about bringing some basic fairness to the credit scoring system. I mean, credit is currently a currency in our society. It unlocks access to goods and services hardworking Americans need to build some economic security for themselves and their families.

But there are currently, Mr. Speaker, 26 million, or at least one in ten Americans, who do not have a credit record. They are what they call invisibles. Another 19 million Americans do not have enough information to score. Low-income individuals and racial and ethnic minorities are often in the worst shape.

If we want to do something about closing the wealth gap between different peoples of different backgrounds and really bringing economic opportunity to all, this is the right bill to take a step.

About one in four Latinos and African Americans either don't have a credit record or don't have enough of a record to score, and almost half of the residents of low-income communities do not have a score.

That doesn't mean they don't have needs, Mr. Speaker. That doesn't mean they don't get phones and they don't pay bills and they don't get apartments. It just means they tend to pay more for them.

In fact, we have heard the old adage that the poor pay more. It is expensive to be poor. Those things are true. This bill can make that a little less true and bring a little bit more happiness and economic prosperity to people.

This bill allows credit rating agencies to use on-time rent, phone, and utility payments when determining credit scores. As a result, more than a third of previously unscoreable Americans will now have access to prime credit and the opportunities that come with it.

This bill isn't just about access to credit, though. It is about a little bit more than that. It is also about saving hardworking Americans real money, thousands of dollars, Mr. Speaker, on their car loans and on their mortgages, because if you are unscoreable or if your score is unnecessarily high because that non-loan data is not counted, you may get the loan, but you will pay more for it.

That is money that could be used to help build a family's wealth, create some savings, Mr. Speaker, so that when you get into an emergency, you can use your own money as opposed to going to a payday lender.

This is a good bill. That is why it has bipartisan support and that is why I am glad that Congressman French Hill and I were able to work together on it.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for a favorable vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, the bill makes clear that the penalties apply to officers and employees of Federal departments or agencies who willfully disclose agency records that contain personal identifiable information pursuant to section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act. These acts are already illegal, and this bill is a clarification to make sure that these penalties apply.

This is a commonsense bipartisan bill, and I urge support.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Vargas), a respected, active member of the Financial Services Committee.

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

Madam Speaker, let me thank the gentleman for yielding the time.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to stand in full opposition to Securing America's Future Act, H.R. 4760.

First of all, let me say that the only thing that the President's executive order shows is that he is willing to rip families apart unless it costs him politically. If there is a political price to pay, then he will back up and try to confuse what is really going on. But at the end of the day, this zero-tolerance policy is absolutely wrong and we have to end it now.

Making unlawful presence a crime is probably a violation of international law. This bill makes it difficult, makes it impossible for people who are seeking asylum to come here and try to get their cases adjudicated. They are running, in many cases, from the most abominable situations imaginable. People should know that America is the kind of place you can come to if you are seeking refuge.

Let me also say that this thing to build this wall, we will never allow that. We will never agree to that, and we will oppose it with everything we have because it is a symbol of hate and division.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Ro Khanna for organizing this today and holding this particular Special Order about Janus v. AFSCME. But, actually, the larger question is: What kind of shape will America be in if the Supreme Court makes the wrong decision?

We envision, in the Progressive Caucus, an America in which parents can dream about their kids being able to go to college. We believe that you ought to be able to put food on the table. You ought to be able to get a good job and earn a decent pay and have a voice on your job. You ought to be able to turn on the water faucet and drink the water. You ought to be able to drive down the road without busting the axle on your car. You ought to be able to have safe affordable transit to get to where you have got to go.

We don't think this is too much to ask. This is something that other countries in the world have. We think you ought to be able to go to the doctor if you are sick. Now, the guarantor of all those things for so many years has been people coming together and organizing themselves into a group that argued and negotiated with their employer for a fair wage. They negotiated with their employer, and they said: Look, you know, you want us to supply labor? We will do it. You have got to pay us right. You have got to make sure the benefits package is right. You have got to make sure that this thing is making sense, not just for you, but for us, too.

And, for many years, employers who didn't want to see strikes and didn't want to see labor shutdowns, and wanted to stop the turnover that you would see, and wanted to make sure that there was labor peace, came to an agreement, and said: Okay, we will work with you.

And between World War II and right up until about 1970, even a little beyond, that bargain helped create the world's greatest middle class. It wasn't easy to get a cohesive union movement. In fact, there was a time in American history where being in a union was a criminal offense. They called the Pinkertons in. They beat you down. There is a lot of labor blood that has been spilled in this country in order to have a labor movement, but we have got one.

And by 1957, a year that had racism and segregation, sexism and homophobia, had one thing going, and that was about 35 percent of all Americans were in a union, and about 35 percent more were paid as if they were. So the unions were setting the wage scale, and they helped create an American middle class, which really is what we think of when we think of America at its best economically.

The union movement didn't just stop at labor issues. It went further than that. It was the UAW that helped fund the March on Washington. The march for jobs and justice was funded by organized labor. It was labor that stood with those sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, when they were on strike and Martin Luther King came down to march with them. It was AFSCME--AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees--who had the back of those workers in Memphis. And when we lost the great Martin Luther King just about 50 years ago, AFSCME was by the side of those workers. And those workers literally won that strike, and many of them are still around to talk about it today.

These folks made it so that in 1968 you had a rate of poverty that was much lower than it is today. You had CEOs that made about 20 times more than their average worker. Today, that is 339 to 1, and that is just the median. In fact, you have companies like Mattel that make almost 5,000 times--the CEO makes 5,000 times the average worker. McDonald's, the CEO makes 3,100 times the average worker. Kohl's, the CEO makes 1,200 times the average worker.

But in 1968, with its strong union movement, we had an emerging civil rights movement. We had a minimum wage that was probably in the neighborhood, as has been mentioned, that was livable at the time, if you compare it to inflation. You had a rate of poverty where fewer people were in poverty. You had a ratio between workers and CEO which was much more rational.

And something interesting happened beginning in the 1970s; there came an organized concerted attack on labor. And people will tell you that in 1980, after Ronald Reagan was elected, he went out on the campaign trail saying that he was for working people, but shortly after he got in office, he dismissed the air traffic controllers.

When he broke that strike and he broke those workers, it set working people in this country on a trajectory, which brings us to where we are now, which is stagnating wages for literally three, four decades. The CEOs have done great. And if you ask Donald Trump, he will tell you: Oh, yeah, you know, the stock market is booming out of control. We are doing fine.

But, you know, in this America, our America, this largesse is not shared by most people. My colleague, Pramila Jayapal, mentioned earlier that about 67 percent of Americans would not know what to do if they were hit with a $1,000 bill. They don't have it. But there are even other statistics that are as jarring, as equally upsetting. Other statistics would show just how difficult it is for Americans to pay their bills.

Now, I know we are talking about Janus today. I am getting there. But there is a recent story that I want to share with you, and we can submit it for the Record, and the title of this story, Mr. Speaker, is ``More Than 40 Percent of Americans Can't Pay Their Bills.'' That is the name of the story, and it says: ``Donald Trump thinks the economy is doing great--way, way better than under Obama. Actually, Obama created more jobs on his way out the door than Trump has so far.

``But that's besides the point.''

The story says, based on this research, the conclusion of the research: ``43 percent of us struggle to pay our bills, and 34 percent are suffering `material hardships,' including `running out of food, not being able to afford a place to live, or lacking the money to seek medical treatment.' ''

The truth is, Mr. Speaker, is that we live in a Nation that is lurching toward plutocracy. We live in a Nation that is lurching toward oligopoly and oligarchs, because the people who make the hamburgers, they don't benefit in the profits of the company. The CEO does that. The people who make the clothes and work for Kohl's and work their job, they don't benefit. They just get survival wages, and the executives take it all home for themselves.

Part of the reason is a conservative philosophy which says that companies should not have to pay any taxes. They shouldn't have to abide by any regulations. They should be allowed to slam labor cost to the ground, if they can, and then the CEO should be able to walk away with all the money. And then the theory goes that they will use that money to invest in plant and equipment, and then everybody will be better off. But that never happens.

That Republican philosophy, that conservative philosophy, is absolutely and utterly bankrupt. It doesn't work. It is not true. And, yet, we keep on doing it over and over again. But part of this philosophy is the union busting. And they have been on a 40-year trajectory of trying to break the union.

I mentioned PATCO a little while ago, when Reagan broke PATCO. That sent a shockwave that reverberated even until the moment we are in now, and it is culminating in this attack on Janus.

Let me tell you, they have been trolling around for a worker, a public employee, to try to break Janus--break public employees for years. A few years ago, right before the Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed, there was a case before the Supreme Court called the Frederick case. And in that case, it is exactly like the Janus case. Why are they similar? Because right-wing law firms are trolling the country looking for any public employee to try to attack the union and attack fair share. That is what they have been doing.

They have been going around: Will you take the case? Can we represent you? Can we represent you? And they finally found somebody, this guy, Janus. And he makes the outrageous claim that he--who benefits from collective bargaining and who the union expends money to make sure he has a decent contract--he is saying: Oh, this is unfair. My free speech rights are going into this union, and I don't want that to happen.

Well, they are not, actually. All they are doing is assessing a reasonable fee that is associated with the cost of negotiating on his behalf to have a better wage. But he says: No, I want to be able to benefit from the work that the union does, but I don't want to pay anything. It is quite ridiculous. But that is the case that is in the Supreme Court right now.

You know, you want to know what is in the First Amendment? The right to freedom of assembly. The right to freedom of assembly is in the Constitution. And if some workers want to assemble together and negotiate for better wages and better benefits with their employer, I believe they have a constitutional right to do so.

What I don't think you have a constitutional right to do is to be a freeloader, which is what Janus is arguing. He is saying: I want to be able to benefit from what the union negotiates on my behalf, but I don't want to pay anything.

He doesn't have to pay into the fund that goes to political stuff. He doesn't have to pay for that. That issue has been decided. It is not required under the law that he help fund candidates or issues that he doesn't want to support. But it is fair, and it is right, and it is reasonable, and the Supreme Court has found in the past that an assessment on employees for the cost of representation is fair and constitutional. Now, this is a case called the Abood case where this was found to be constitutional. What they want to do is flip Abood and say: No, you can now be a freeloader.

Let me just say to my good friend from California, our law has been favoring the employer over the worker for years now. Here is the law right now. If you are an employer and you fire a worker because they are trying to organize a union, that is not legal to do. But guess what? That worker can file, but they can't file a private lawsuit; they have to file under the National Labor Relations Act. They can't get punitive and treble damages. They can't do discovery. They just have to go through the NLRB process, which takes quite a long time, according to most workers who go through it. And when they do go through it, all they can ever get is back pay, minus whatever they earned after they were fired illegally.

This is a very small price to pay for people who are exercising what I believe is a constitutional right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. But why shouldn't you fire them because, hey, it is the worst of the cost of doing business for some employers who don't want a union?

Another example of how unfair the situation is an employer can tell the workers: You better be in the cafeteria tomorrow because there is a union drive, and I want to threaten you and scare you and tell you all the reasons why it is a bad idea.

This is called captive audience.

Can the union go into the same plant and say, ``Well, now we want to give you our side of why you do need a union''?

They cannot do it. It is not fair. It is like having an election, where the rights of the workers will be determined by the election, and yet only one side gets to be able to go and argue in the negative.

By the way, if the employer said, ``Come to the meeting, we are going to tell you why you do need a union,'' that would be an unfair labor practice.

It is crazy, really. But it is the kind of world that a guy like Neil Gorsuch thinks would be a good one. This is the guy who was, in my view, illegally put on the Supreme Court of the United States-- illegally.

The Constitution says that the sitting President gets to offer a replacement for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Barack Obama did that, and the head of the Senate Republicans, who was in the majority, said: We will not hear anybody.

Do you know what? The role of the Senate is to give advice and consent. They can say, ``We think that this guy is not qualified''; they can say that this guy has a judicial temperament that is not proper; they can criticize that nominee any way they want to. But one thing they cannot do is say: We simply will not discharge our constitutional responsibility. But that is what they did do because nobody can make them do otherwise.

They did it because they could do it, but it was wrong. It was actually immoral, and it was an abuse of their responsibility as Members of the United States Senate. But they didn't care. They want power--raw, naked power. That is what they did, and somehow they got away with it because they got Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. This is the guy who was a deciding vote in a case that, I believe, is a foreshadowing of what we are going to see in Janus.

Just the other day, a case called Murphy Oil was decided--Monday. Neil Gorsuch cast a deciding vote in a Supreme Court decision that ruled, for

the first time, that bosses can forbid their workers from joining together in class action lawsuits to challenge violations of the Federal labor laws. This is an outrageous usurpation.

Bringing a complaint against your boss or your company is expensive and risky, especially for workers who have no safety net. Congresswoman Jayapal just got through telling you how stressed to the wall American workers are, and yet those workers, who don't have much money, are now told that they cannot come together in a class action suit to challenge violations of Federal labor law. They have to pursue these claims individually. They don't have a chance. The bargaining position power is absolutely unequal, and yet that is what we got.

Decisions like this are why Mitch McConnell and Republicans have engaged in the historic obstruction to block President Obama from filling the Supreme Court vacancy for nearly a year. They wanted an ideologue like Neil Gorsuch to tip antiworker cases like this.

So what is going to happen in Janus? I hate to admit it, but even I, who consider myself quite optimistic, believe that: Look, they put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court to destroy public employee bargaining; that is why he is there. I have no illusions about what is about to happen. But it is just like other unjust Supreme Court decisions that have happened, along the lines of Shelby County, which destroyed the Voting Rights Act, or along the lines of Citizens United, which basically said that corporations can dump massive amounts of money into elections.

Who has a massive amount of money? You know. America's corporate elites.

And then it goes all the way back to unjust decisions like the Lochner case or even Dred Scott.

History will look very dimly on this moment in time. I believe that when you crush decency and fairness to earth, it does rise. And I believe that workers of this country, if they are prohibited by the law and the Supreme Court from being treated fairly, they are just going to start going on strike all over the place, just like the teachers just showed us that they would. They are just going to start going on strike, and we will just settle it out in the street. This is unfortunate.

Wouldn't it be much better to have fair bargaining and come to the table and negotiate decent wages and benefits? Of course it would be.

Those teachers didn't want to go on strike. They wanted to be in the classroom teaching those kids.

But whether it is Arizona, North Carolina, or Oklahoma, these people, who dedicated their lives to young people, had to go out on the trail, go out on the strike line, just so that they could get a decent situation for those kids and themselves. Those teachers said: These kids' learning environment is our work environment. Both are bad. So we have to strike. We have been given no alternative but to do so.

So they did, and they got some justice out of it.

This is what the likes of Neil Gorsuch and Janus v. AFSCME are pushing the American labor picture towards. It is too bad, but I have great faith in the American worker. They will not take this lying down, and we will be on the picket line with them.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this FIRST STEP Act. I spent 17 years of my life representing people accused of crimes.

Some of them are people whom I will never forget. One is a woman named Daniella. She had some prior misdemeanor offenses and was charged with possession of crack cocaine. She was looking at a sentence of about 60 months, based on the amount. She had a small child. There were no weapons involved.

The prosecutors told her: If you tell on your boyfriend, we will take you to State court. If you don't, we are taking you to Federal court.

They took her to Federal court. And try as I did, she ended up getting 60 months of prison. She got taken away from her child. I remember the screams of that little boy as they walked his mother into custody.

I cannot imagine asking her to stay in prison one day longer than she needed to. I cannot imagine not giving every opportunity to improve her life and her skills.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I do so with a lot of enthusiasm today.

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

Mr. Speaker, in just about an hour or so, Congress will vote to roll back some of the rules for the biggest banks in the country.

Think about that for a minute. Just 10 years after the big banks crashed the economy, Senate Republicans and some Democrats want to roll back the rules that were put in place to prevent the next crash.

Some of my colleagues may have forgotten about the bad, bad days of that crash in 2008, but I sure have not. Millions of people lost their homes. In fact, 1 in 54 homes was in foreclosure. $2.6 trillion, with a T, vanished from people's retirement accounts.

Think about that for a moment. Why on Earth would we go back there?

And let me remind everyone here: Before this crash, we heard all this talk about progrowth. Before the big crash, they said we want to allow commercial banks and investment banks and insurance companies just to all conglomerate together. We want to allow banks to use the money of their depositors to make gambling decisions on Wall Street. We are going to sell people no-doc, low-doc loans, and we are going to let the seller get a yield spread premium for steering people to high-cost loans; and we are going to let them securitize all of it, and if they lose their money, it is okay because we are going to let them buy credit default swaps, which is insurance, so that the American people lose but the big banks and the insurance companies never do.

Mr. Speaker, all this progrowth talk is a movie that we have seen before. Remember Alan Greenspan telling all us: Let them do what they want to do. It doesn't matter. You can't interfere with the market. The market has all the answers.

We found out who had the answers when it came to bailing out Wall Street. It was the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to not vote for this because it will be the American people who pay, not to mention people who live in manufactured homes who are going to be allowed to be charged more for their home choices, and it will open the door to racial discrimination which has been proved time and time again. This bill is bad. Vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I come before the House today to talk about the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018. We call it the farm bill.

It is supposed to be about supporting farmers, strengthening communities, making sure that we have nutritious food, looking out for our environment, and generally feeding America and even sometimes the world.

Instead, this bill would allow companies to spray pesticides into our waterways, which are endangered all over this country. It will allow all sorts of environmental challenges and will diminish the quality of life for people. They won't even allow a provision to have a Clean Water Act permit to spray pesticides.

The bill is also an attack on local control. I thought local control was a hallmark of what it meant to be conservative. Apparently not, because this bill preempts local governments from taking steps to protect their communities from pesticides. I think a local community is in a better position to understand the health needs of its people than the Federal Government is.

The bill would also make deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, a program that used to be called food stamps. There are no actual stamps anymore; this benefit is provided on a card that people use. The 5-year authorization of the farm bill would cut $23 billion from SNAP--$23 billion.

The proposal also adds work requirements. Now, some people think: Oh, yeah, what is wrong with making people work for a living? I work for a living.

Well, the truth is, people who use the food stamp program often work for a living too. They just happen to have a tough patch in their lives where they need their neighbors--that is us--to step up and help make sure that they can have food on the table.

The idea that people who have economic hardship don't want to work is simply wrong. This body gives money out to rich people all the time and doesn't ask for any work requirements. We don't ask for many requirements at all, but we do it. It is all part of this shaming and blaming the poor.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this new work requirement, plus other restrictions proposed by the farm bill, as proposed, would end up denying or reducing nutritional aid to about 2 million people, mostly families with children.

By the way, 70 percent of poor kids in America eligible for food stamps live in a household with somebody who works, but the Federal minimum wage is $7.25. On $7.25, that works out to about $15,000 a year. You could work full-time and be eligible for food stamps.

People who don't work because of whatever difficult patch they hit in their life should not be shamed into not accepting food assistance. If they are not healthy and they are not well-fed, how are they going to get back in the workforce?

Under this proposal, most adults between 18 and 59 will be required to work part-time or enroll in 20 hours a week of workforce training to receive assistance. It would impose stricter eligibility guidelines for low-income families who qualify for SNAP through other welfare programs.

Many SNAP recipients face legitimate barriers to enrolling in these programs, such as unreliable transportation. One of my colleagues already talked about the difficulty with transportation in getting to a better paying job in this economy. Low housing security. A lot of people are homeless. It is very difficult to stay employed if you are homeless. And shifting childcare and medical schedules.

SNAP helps 42 million people in nearly 21 million households. In 2016, SNAP lifted 3.6 million people out of poverty. They were in poverty; now they weren't because of SNAP. It is a good program.

In my own State of Minnesota, more than 69 percent of SNAP participants are families with children. Almost 30 percent are families with members who are elderly or people with disabilities. More than 54 percent are working families.

People who use food stamp benefits work hard every day. They work harder than many of us who earn a lot more than them.

SNAP kept 111,000 people out of poverty in Minnesota, including almost 60,000 children, per year from 2009 to 2012.

Let me wrap up by saying that the farm bill, as currently proposed, I cannot vote for. I will have to urge a ``no'' vote, and I hope that we learn something important about people who struggle hard in this economy.