Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairwoman for her leadership because today's bill is about restoring effective law enforcement for consumers and protecting them from predatory Wall Street practices.

Republicans want to shield Wall Street, granting it free rein to plunder. Instead of draining the swamp, this lawless President has drained the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of its strength. Public enforcement actions are down 75 percent. That is how they feel about law enforcement.

The President is refusing to protect our active-duty military from predatory lending; halting payments to consumers who have been wronged; eliminating the office that is designed to prevent discrimination in credit against Latinos, African Americans, and Asian Americans; and eliminating the office dedicated to addressing student loan abuses.

Enough is enough. Instead of handcuffing those who do wrong, this administration is handcuffing the agency designed to ensure law enforcement.

And while this President profited himself from scams like Trump University, it is time to restore important consumer protections: law enforcement to protect students, active military, and the retirement savings of our seniors.

In just five years, $12 billion was returned to over 30 million American citizens. Wells Fargo would never have been penalized a penny for its multimillion-dollar fraud without a cop on the beat.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Mulvaney have been about pulling that cop back so that there is no protection for those this agency was designed to serve. Let's approve this bill to protect Americans from financial piranhas who would strip their savings to the bone.

Mr. Chair, I salute the leadership of the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, for standing up for Americans who have been abandoned by this administration. It is essential we do our work in Congress to say it is consumers who come first, not those who would prefer to take advantage of them.

Madam Chair, I rise only to commend the gentleman from Texas for his important work on this arbitration issue.

There has been a very effective movement to quash the rights of consumers. In the financial services area, people are told to deal with it.

Our colleague Hank Johnson has the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act as it relates to nursing homes and employment. Our colleague Katherine Clark has a bill to repeal these arbitration restrictions with reference to discrimination on the basis of sex and sexual harassment in the workplace. Each of these is very important.

Arbitration is arbitrary. It does not fairly resolve disputes. It is biased toward the financial institution, and toward the employer and others in other cases. Arbitration is a model that does not work well to solve most disputes of this type.

It has even been suggested, amazingly enough, to bring arbitration into the drug price debate now. I don't believe arbitration is a way to solve these problems, and it is certainly not a way to get us lower drug prices

Mr. Speaker, too many Americans face severe discrimination because of whom they love.

LGBTQ rights are civil rights. They are human rights.

Participating and contributing equally, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, brings us closer to the self-evident truth that, while we are not all created the same, in a just democracy, we are all created equally.

Despite State Republican hostility, City of Austin ordinances have long protected against the same discrimination we are combating today. City contractors have complied with these ordinances, whose requirements set the standard for our community.

Both Austin and San Antonio enjoy perfect municipal Equality Index scores from the Human Rights Campaign. With this bill, we set the same type of standard for our entire country.

Mr. Speaker, 1,400 businesses in the Texas Competes coalition have sent a clear message in favor of inclusion and against discrimination.

We need strong Federal enforcement. That is what this bill does.

Mr. Speaker, we need strong Federal enforcement since local governments have imperfect tools and often have been stifled by narrow-minded State legislatures.

No American's civil rights should depend upon their ZIP Code. Don't stand in the doorway. Let's pass the Equality Act today.

Among many who have been strong advocates for this act, I particularly honor Sam Smoot and Robert Salcido with Equality Texas; Julian Tovar and Sissi Yado with the Human Rights Campaign; and, of course, our colleagues, Congressman Cicilline and Congressman Pocan.

Mr. Chairman, I am here to wade through the pool of crocodile tears being shed by Republicans who, for eight long years, have done nothing meaningful to address prescription price gouging.

This bill provides some protection from anticompetitive pharmaceutical practices. And while it fails to lower drug prices immediately as we need, it offers great hope for the future. Key provisions are substantially the same as legislation I have introduced twice before.

Big Pharma depends on monopoly power to spike prices. Taxpayers finance much of the drug development; then the government grants a monopoly and, too often, that patent monopoly is extended wrongfully by buying off the competition in what are called pay-for-delay contracts.

Big Pharma claims that it has to price-gouge in order to solve and provide cures for the future. What it is really innovative about is not cures, but maintaining its monopoly position.

Today's modest action is very important, but it will not fulfill our Democratic promise to deliver on lowering drug costs until we use the full power of the Federal Government, its purchasing power, to directly negotiate drug prices, much the way that the Veterans Administration gets lower prices for our veterans.

Big Pharma will not yield its monopoly prices willingly. It will take more than a cry of, ``Kumbaya.'' It will take enough Members here with the intestinal fortitude to stand up to one of the most powerful lobbies in America and provide genuine relief.

Let's do that.

Madam Speaker, after so many failed attempts to repeal our access to healthcare, Trump and his Republican cohorts are finding new ways to take away coverage from millions of Americans who suffer with preexisting conditions.

Now, Republicans have hijacked the mechanism that was designed to promote State healthcare innovation to subvert that very innovation.

What they call ``innovation'' is finding new ways to destroy protections for preexisting conditions and to promote junk insurance plans that cover--well, they cover what you don't need most.

If you really need it, if it is for your medical condition, they are unlikely to cover it.

How outrageous.

A waiver of Federal regulations designed to encourage innovation that just waves goodbye to the safeguards that an estimated 40 percent of Texans with preexisting conditions really need.

So, while Trump continues to hide his tax returns, he cannot hide the fact that he is sabotaging the healthcare protections for millions of Americans.

After bankrupting his own businesses and leaving creditors at a loss for decades, Trump would bankrupt families with serious medical needs.

And it is almost a joke that he tells us he's got a great plan to solve all of our healthcare needs--he said it again at the White House this morning--but he is going to wait until after the next election to show us what his secret plan is, which sounds a lot like the failed plan that he advocated in the last election.

Let's just pass this bill and tear down the wall that Trump and his cohorts want to build between too many Americans and their doctors.

Mr. Speaker, climate change is already wreaking economic and security havoc: deep freezes; an incredible 5 feet of water dumped on Houston, Texas, by a hurricane; in other areas, droughts, amazing wildfires, and extensive disease.

What we need is alternative energy, not Trump ``alternative facts,'' and decisions that are based on science, not on mythology. President Trump's rejection of sound climate change facts only makes Chinese clean energy great again.

We need to lead on the road to clean green energy, not get run over. Fighting climate change is an existential challenge, but it is also an amazing economic opportunity. We can create green jobs right here with technology that is exported to the world, instead of letting our international competitors prevail.

Recommitting to the Paris climate agreement is more than bipartisan. It is joining 2,000 American businesses. It is joining 23 States. It is joining cities across America, like San Antonio and Austin, that have already pledged that they want climate action, not more nonsense and climate denying.

It is joining 21 senior Defense officials who identify climate change action as a way to address a major national security challenge.

President Trump continues to block meaningful environmental action by clogging the corridors of power with fossil fuel industry cheerleaders. A Green New Deal is an alternative to the same old dirty deal threatening our planet with dark money, where the only thing green is that money clogging and polluting our democracy.

Climate action does bear some costs, but inaction has even greater costs. Let's embrace the simple truth that preserving the Earth is worth it. Let's embrace an America that is leading on a green economic revolution.

Madam Speaker, the blood of innocents stains this Trump administration. And while the Trump family pals around with Saudi murderers, that blood continues to flow in the world's worst humanitarian disaster. Only last week, four years after the first Saudi assault on Yemen, they killed another group of children at a hospital, apparently with American bombs.

Just as the Trump administration has aided and abetted war crimes in Yemen, this Congress has aided and abetted the Trump administration in avoiding any accountability.

Last year, Republicans blocked any consideration of a bipartisan Senate resolution to stop U.S. involvement in this war. Most recently, these folks used a devious motion to recommit, whose real purpose was not the very worthy goal of condemning anti-Semitism, but the sole purpose was to obstruct this resolution and ensure it never became adopted by Congress.

Today, we must reject any such motion--no matter how worthy it may be, it can be dealt with in other legislation--in order to halt all American involvement in this travesty.

We are talking about our relations with the Saudis. You know those folks, Madam Speaker. They are the ones with the leader with the bone saw to dismember an opponent and who tortures women for asserting their rights.

Hearts do break for those who are lost and tortured, but until we break with the Saudis in Yemen, the bombing, the starvation, the disease, and the slaughter will continue.

Months, years, hundreds of small graves ago, this Congress should have done its job. Today is a moment of moral clarity, a moment for this Chamber to act as the Constitution requires: to weigh war and peace and, for once, to extract ourselves from a war we did not start and to find a way to make peace the victor.

We can finally place a clean War Powers Act resolution directly on President Trump's desk, and do so today. Let us do what is right, and let us do so before more young lives are destroyed.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his work on this.

Mr. Speaker, the relentless, baseless attacks on an American patriot, Robert Mueller, and his team, have moved us ever so closer to a constitutional crisis. Just as we cannot yield to Trump's attempt to discredit this distinguished team of legal experts, neither can we let them bury the results of this taxpayer-funded investigation.

Having nothing to fear means having nothing to hide. Those who seek to hide this report, obviously, do not believe that the truth will set them free. Rather, as it has for so many of Mr. Trump's sleazy cohorts, they feel that the truth will lock them up. So many lies, so much daily deceit. Already so much evidence of collusion and obstruction and, from the organization's own former lawyer, evidence of an apparent criminal enterprise that bears the name of the Trump organization.

If it is a witch hunt, Mr. President, it has more witches than a Mar- a-Lago

Halloween party. And your witches' brew seems to have cast a spell over many Members of this Congress who find themselves locked in continuing silence or wishy-washy efforts to ignore and bolster your floundering Presidency.

Today's resolution says to President Trump, who has shown some consistent disregard for the rule of law: You cannot seize and secret evidence of conduct that others need to see. Let the taxpayers see the results of the investigation of the wrongdoing, which their dollars have rightly funded.

Our congressional duty is to enforce the borders, to be Border Patrol people, to see that this President, who is willing to cross every line, every constitutional boundary, to see that he is contained within the borders of the Constitution. For the rule of law to stand, the administration cannot be allowed to sit on the special counsel's report.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, Texas is ground zero for voter suppression. Texas Republicans enacted the most stringent voter ID law in the country. They slashed communities across our State through partisan gerrymandering. And now, this year, in what a Federal court has just described as a ``ham-handed move'' which ``exemplifies the power of government to strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among us,'' the Abbott administration has initiated a massive voter purge by making the false claim that tens of thousands of people have voted illegally in our State.

Our State has a problem. It is not too many people voting illegally; it is too few people voting at all. The difference that you see in this debate is that we believe elections should be won for one party or the other based on turning out the voters, and too often, our Republican colleagues believe they are won by throwing out the voters.

I believe that the important reform that we are considering today will replace these purges with the urge to have voters participate by removing the many obstacles that stand in their way.

It makes the right to vote more than a paper guarantee. It makes it a reality by allowing people to know their own power, to shape our democracy, and hold every public official accountable. ``For the People'' means stopping the steady Trump erosion of our democracy by empowering the people to make their voices heard.

I am so pleased that this legislation includes a provision that I authored to ensure that we seek the business tax returns, as well as the personal individual returns, of candidates for President.

Now, this particular amendment is directed not specifically at Mr. Trump, but his conduct underscores why we must require it. He had his personal law firm review his tax returns, and they awarded him an all- clear from any Russian connection.

Mr. Speaker, they noted that he was the sole or principal owner of 500 separate business entities that stretched from Azerbaijan to Miami, and they gave him an all-clear, upon which he asked us to rely without noting that the same firm had proudly boasted that it was ``the Russia law firm of the year.''

Some of us believe we need a little more credible source to review his conduct. But not just review his conduct, that of anyone, for either party, who aspires to be the most powerful person in the entire world.

Even President Nixon invited the Joint Committee on Taxation to review his tax returns, explaining that the people have got to know whether their President is a crook--something very relevant to our times. Candidates who cannot meet the very low Richard Nixon standard have no right to our highest office.

If left untouchable and unreachable, without exposure to sunlight, we will find business tax returns hide the darkest secrets. It is good that we have a strong act demanding disclosure of those returns.

Mr. Speaker, selling a gun to a convicted felon, to a perpetrator of domestic violence, to a fugitive from justice, merits a jail term, but those who oppose this reasonable background check bill are enabling just that.

Someone who couldn't buy a .22 inside a gun shop can, today, go outside that shop and buy a military-style killing machine and get away with it.

Doctors Seth Goldstein and Lisa Epstein, who visited my office this very week on behalf of Moms Demand Action, and 117 San Antonio physicians, they have a view that is different from Members of Congress concerning the result of gun violence. They witness this violence in the emergency room after young bodies are torn apart.

What a different view this debate would have if it were occurring amidst the pain, violence, and blood in a hospital emergency room, because closing this loophole is about life support.

We have got to end the trauma. Let's join the doctors who are out there seeking to save lives and do our part to save lives by passing this bill.

Mr. Speaker, the serious border emergency that America is confronted with today is an emergency that Donald Trump has created by ignoring borders--ignoring the borders set forth in our Constitution, borders that were set forth to prevent an all-powerful executive, a would-be king, or the type of tyrant that Trump so admires abroad.

After Congress repeatedly rejected his phony border crisis and wasteful wall, Trump decided: build it anyway.

Well, today's emergency wouldn't have happened without two years of Republicans who have continued to yield the right-of-way to his creeping wrongdoing--more and more of it--Republicans who can just never summon the ability to say ``no'' to Trump.

Today, we must reject this unconstitutional power grab that diverts resources from real threats to an imaginary, politically contrived one.

Today, we defend our Constitution and our democracy by pushing back on the lies, the deceit, the anti-immigrant hysteria, and the fear- mongering mismanagement of this administration.

Mr. Chair, finally, this House is doing what the Constitution demands: to debate war and peace.

The problem here is that President Trump has essentially subcontracted out American foreign policy in the Middle East to a murderous Saudi regime, and the result has been that 85,000 little children under the age of five have been starved to death or have died of disease as a result of Saudi blockades and aggression. Indifference to their suffering is dooming a generation--unlawful, murderous airstrikes with bombs made in America on schools, on hospitals, on weddings, on markets.

All these people who speak out about the security of Israel and of America, they seem to have forgotten that these same Saudis have been giving away American-made weapons to al-Qaida--al-Qaida--once the sworn enemy of the Houthis about whom they complain.

The Saudi leadership, which approved the killing and dismemberment of an American resident journalist, is unsurprisingly not moved by the suffering of these children. They are intent on annihilation of the Yemenis.

We cannot let the slaughter continue in the name of American taxpayers. The Saudis do not represent our values, but they are using our tax dollars and our weapons.

Instead of shutting down our government, President Trump needs to shut down cooperation with the regime that tortures women who speak out, that kills its enemies who dare to speak the truth, and that is waging an immoral conflict, the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe.

Mr. Chairman, the days of symbolic action have far passed. Months, years, hundreds of small graves ago this Congress should have acted. Today, we can act to put a stop to this nonsense, this misappropriation of our values in the Middle East.

Mr. Speaker, I would just say to my colleague and neighbor, Mr. McCaul, I hope that means that every Republican, none of whom are on the floor here with him to explain their position on this, will join us on this important vote, because this sanctions law against Russians was enacted over President Trump's objection. The purpose was to deter Russian aggression against us and our allies, not to yield the right-of-way.

But now the administration is lifting sanctions on a thug who is linked at the hip to Vladimir Putin and who only engages in more wrongdoing.

Let's not aid this one-way gift to Putin, a gift that was deliberately slipped under the Christmas tree at the Kremlin on the eve of congressional departure so we could have as little oversight as possible.

Secretary Mnuchin suggested he was open to meaningful additional time for us to review this, but he has gone radio silent. He calculated that there were enough House enablers to rubber-stamp this sordid deal.

We sought a classified intelligence assessment of whether sanctioned Putin buddy, Oleg Deripaska, would continue to control the world's largest aluminum company after these sanctions were lifted.

Leaders on both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Special Committee on Intelligence have expressed their national security concerns about this deal, but Trump wants to us to rely on tweets, not intelligence; on fantasy, not reality. If only he were as eager to reopen this government for American businesses and American citizens as he is to reopen this sanctioned Russian company.

Trump provides sanction relief for a sham deal whereby this one thug transfers his shares to his personal foundation, a kind of Trump foundation-type-group, his ex-wife, and a sanctioned Russian bank.

Treasury refuses to identify for us any of these new, so-called ``independent'' directors. But what we do know is that the chair of one of these companies is someone who is under investigation by the British Parliament and who cannot see classified information, and the chair of another one is a cheerleader for the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea and their war with Ukraine.

All of this misconduct is happening against the backdrop of a President who has increasingly become a loud megaphone for Russian propaganda and attacking our most trusted allies, turning Syria over to Putin, suggesting we withdraw from NATO, praising the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan with a distorted history. Each day of chaos is another day when Vladimir Putin's investment in the election of Donald Trump pays him bigger dividends in driving to undermine Western democracy and our way of life.

Mr. Speaker, let us send a strong, bipartisan message, not just to the White House, but to the Kremlin, by rejecting this favoritism toward Putin.

Let's vote today as Members of the United States Congress, not the Russian Duma.

Madam Speaker, Trump and his apologists are so very good at breaking things. It is just fixing them they can't seem to find an answer to.

This underlying lawsuit is little more than a conspiracy between a criminally-indicted Texas Republican attorney general and the Trump administration that couldn't find its voice when it was time to defend protections for preexisting conditions for so many American families.

There is no doubt there is collusion. There is Republican collusion right here. It is collusion to strip away lifesaving protection from so many Americans.

Intervening in this lawsuit is an important step in protecting families from the uncertainties of fine-print denials, excessive premiums, inadequate coverage, and just basic access to affordable healthcare.

We must intervene because of a preexisting condition--and it is a rather unusual one. It is called amnesia. These Republicans have political amnesia. They cannot remember before the Affordable Care Act how many families got a diagnosis of bankruptcy at the same time they got a diagnosis

of a severe disease or experienced an accident.

They had over 60 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but they never could come up with a plan to present to this House to replace the Affordable Care Act because, for all of its shortcomings, it is the best answer right now to the needs of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, millions of American families will be enjoying the bounty of our great Nation at this very special time of the year without realizing that their tax dollars are subsiding Saudi war crimes in Yemen.

It is estimated that every 10 minutes, another Yemeni child dies from starvation, disease, or bombs made in America. President Trump has basically delegated his policy in this region to the Saudis, even after the murder and dismemberment of an American resident directly linked to the crown prince. That has not been enough to alter American policy.

So today, once again, a number of us are calling directly and respectfully on Speaker Paul Ryan to stop the blockade on behalf of President Trump and allow this House to vote--vote now--on what has already been approved by the United States Senate on a strong bipartisan basis, a resolution to withdraw U.S. support from the Saudi forces in the murderous war in Yemen.

Let's stop America's role in the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today.