Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, next Monday, when our country honors an apostle of nonviolence, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Iran will begin reducing its nuclear stockpile.

This important action is part of an international agreement to begin implementing the interim Joint Plan of Action that was announced in November. Hope for a nonviolent resolution of our conflict with Iran will appropriately advance on a day that honors nonviolence.

Some in Congress have been unwilling to accept these negotiations or to acknowledge that the administration has been successful in uniting other countries around the world in enforcing sanctions against Iran.

Indeed, in what appears to have been largely a partisan outcry, some of our colleagues condemned the November agreement late on the Saturday night when it was announced, without knowing what was in it, other than that President Obama had approved it.

As a Member, myself, who has consistently voted here to impose tough economic sanctions on Iran, I believe that these sanctions have worked. The choice is not between sanctions and no sanctions. It is between recognizing that our sanctions have the potential to realize our important goals and not give up on them without even really trying.

The Iranians are well aware that this Congress can act almost instantly to add even more stringent sanctions if they waver from diplomacy.

Can we trust the current Iranian regime? Of course not. That is why the painstaking task of verifying every operational detail of any final agreement is so very important.

If done with the thoroughness required, this is a task that may well take more than 6 months; but as negotiations for a permanent agreement get under way, we will have new, regular inspections to verify compliance, something we have not had in the past.

To prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and to ensure the safety of our families and families around the world, a measurable, verifiable negotiated agreement is the wiser course over the unknowable, unlimited risk of war.

Those who would intrude on these fragile negotiations now only increase the danger of Iran becoming a nuclear-armed power. They would undermine the international coalition that has enforced the existing sanctions, and they would empower those hard-line ayatollahs, giving them a pretext to stop progress, giving that to the very people, who reject any cooperation and regularly demand death to America and death to Israel.

Congress must not impede the diplomatic alternative to war. Ultimately, that diplomacy may not be successful. It may not achieve a final, verifiable agreement; but we should make every reasonable effort toward that end.

There are no more important issues considered in this Capitol Building, undertaken by this Congress, than the questions of war and peace.

Just as I do not trust Iran, I do not trust war as the best way to prevent a nuclear Iran, and war is the true alternative offered by those here who would interfere or limit these negotiations.

Starting a war in Iraq cost us so very dearly, and it did not make us safer. Let's not repeat that deadly mistake.

Congress should commend Secretary of State John Kerry, Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, and President Barack Obama for their leadership through tough, persistent diplomacy, through the wise use of American power.

Mr. Speaker, as a Member who has consistently voted to impose sanctions on Iran, I commend Secretaries Kerry and Sherman for an excellent job in seeking to safeguard our families through tough, persistent diplomacy with Iran. We should fully support their vital efforts.

Iranian hardliners may ultimately obstruct a meaningful, permanent agreement; but we should not give them a pretext for doing so. Those here who would interfere or limit these negotiations are really offering the American people only one alternative; it is called war. We have been there and done that before.

Military action in Iraq cost us very dearly. It did not make us safer. Let's not repeat this deadly mistake.

While difficult and uncertain, diplomacy is already eliminating chemical weapons from Syria. It represents our best hope to prevent nuclear weapons in Iran and assure the safety of our families and others around the world.

Mr. Speaker, this Thanksgiving as our family gathered joyfully for dinner, we thought not only of our happiness, but of the many families that can be torn apart by our broken immigration system. We gave thought to those who were gathered at that very moment here on The National Mall going without food, fasting for justice. And they have been doing that now for weeks.

Thanksgiving is about the first immigrants in this land, this land of opportunity. But today, we find too many of our neighbors are denied opportunity because of their immigration status. They can't board a plane. They can't come out of the shadows. They don't know when they go to work in the morning if they will find their family members there at night. This is not right, and the time to fix that is right now.

The only thing preventing a bipartisan response to the immigration problems we have in this country is the unwillingness of the Speaker to permit a bipartisan vote on reform legislation.

And to those who are not moved by their heart, they should be moved by their pocketbook because of the economic potential of permitting these individuals, two-thirds of which, in Mexican families in Texas without documents, have been here for at least a decade. Let them contribute to America.

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

Thank you, Chairman Reichert and Chairman Camp.

Mr. Speaker, abused and neglected children in the foster care system are among the most vulnerable children in our communities. These children have the same needs, desires, and dreams as all young people. They need a safe and loving home. They want and deserve the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to fully experience life. A successful adoption provides foster children with these necessities and gives them the opportunity to achieve their full God-given potential.

Investing in the success of our foster children is not only good for them; but in so many communities, it is the difference between those young people becoming a community asset and a community liability. It is about reducing future unemployment, homelessness, teen pregnancy, and incarceration.

This bill contributes to our continuing efforts to address these issues and to provide permanent homes for abused and neglected children. I am pleased that Mr. Levin and I could work with Chairman Camp and Chairman Reichert to develop this bipartisan legislation to not only extend some important programs, but to make a number of positive changes. Mr. Reichert has outlined some of these. I would add attention to a provision that I authored to help ensure that children don't lose assistance simply because their guardian dies.

As a longtime member of the Congressional Coalition of Adoption and a member of the Foster Youth Caucus, I am pleased that we could take these steps in the right direction on a bipartisan basis to help these young people. The legislation both continues and improves the incentives now provided to the States when they increase the rate at which foster children, who cannot return home, find an adoptive family. These new incentives will now be even more focused on the promotion of adoption of older foster children, who are sometimes a bit more difficult to place and who have found difficulty in securing a permanent home.

Additionally, for the first time, the bill will reward States for helping youth leave foster care to live with a permanent legal guardian. Recognizing the importance of maintaining the link between family and children in foster care, the legislation also extends a relatively new, but expiring, program known as the Family Connection

Grants. These grants go out on a competitive basis to local organizations and State agencies to support various approaches for improving connections between foster families and their children, including linking grandparents to supports and services when they become the primary caregivers for children who would otherwise be in foster care.

Another provision that I care about greatly is strengthening of the requirement that adoption funding be spent on promoting adoption rather than being diverted to other purposes. Most notably, this legislation requires States to fully reinvest the funds into post-adoption services and other child welfare activities when these amounts were made available by an increase in Federal funding for adoption support.

In total, this legislation will continue the progress we have made over the last 15 years in moving foster children into permanent homes. In my home State of Texas, San Antonio has been viewed as a particular model of success for adoption. Each month, Bexar County hosts an adoption day event that allows families to complete their adoptions in a single day. These are proceedings that have allowed children to have shorter stays in foster care and to move more quickly into stable homes. Judges in Bexar County understand that they are responsible for getting children who experience abuse and neglect into a safe foster environment and are responsible for placing that child with a permanent family if it does not become safe for the child to return home.

These improvements in the local adoption system have been encouraged and utilized by important local child advocates like District Judge Peter Sakai and CASA San Antonio. They have allowed for faster and more efficient placement of foster youth into permanent families.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this bipartisan effort, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, surely no Member of the House has expressed more interest in this subject than the founder of the Foster Youth Caucus, our colleague from California (Ms. Bass), to whom I yield 3 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, hopefully the Senate will respond to our strong show of bipartisan support by moving this legislation this year.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the House bring up the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, instead of leaving for a 3-day weekend, that we open the government, go to conference on a budget, and end this Republican government shutdown.

Mr. Speaker, Ms. Pelosi has already cleared it. Who is objecting? Who is not clearing it?

Mr. Speaker, shutting down this House for the next 2 days--after shutting down the government--is truly an act of great irresponsibility. The threat to the security of our families grows with each hour of the government shutdown and with each hour that we approach an historic breach of the full faith and credit of the United States.

One economic expert after another tells us that to move into this uncharted water and economic calamity, along with the consequences it brings to our families--our economy and our standing in the world are jeopardized.

We have two ways to avoid this. Any Member can call up the Senate resolution to continue operations of the government. Republicans have blocked that with a special rule that gives that power only to Eric Cantor, the Republican leader.

You see many Members wearing these stickers, which is the second way. It is to sign a petition to open the government. We have done that. We have reached almost 200 Members of this House. If only a few Republicans will join us, the government will open up.

I would ask the gentlelady about the number of Federal employees you have in your area who remain unable to do their work.

That is exactly what I wanted to explore with you.

First of all, all of those public service workers, whether they are at work or not at work, continue to face the uncertainty of whether their paychecks will arrive when the car payment is due or when the rent is due or when they need to buy another round of groceries. They don't know if those checks will be there.

I think that there are some people out there across our country who are watching this shutdown, and they are saying, Well, at least we are saving some money by not paying hundreds of thousands of workers across the country--Federal employees--who are not yet able to return to work.

In fact, isn't it true that, under the Tea Party faction rule here in the Republican Party, they have passed a resolution through this House to pay every one of those hundreds of thousands of Federal workers to stay idle--to pay them not to work--at a time that they could be delivering the services they were hired to provide so that then the taxpayer has to pay them to stay idle and cannot receive the benefits of the many varied services that these public service workers would like to provide?

That is correct.

The other thing that happens: suppose you have a cafe across the street from a major Federal installation. Suppose you have a dry cleaners or a service station or an auto repair. Your business has fallen through the floor because that workforce is not there, not only to do the public's work, but to do business with you.

There is not any plan from this irresponsible Tea Party caucus to reimburse the many small businesses around America as well as the contractors to whom you referred. There is not any plan to give them a dime. So they will suffer at the same time they pay Federal workers not to work and not to deliver the services that they were hired to provide and are willing to provide.

That is one of the reasons I feel that, with every hour that we go through this government shutdown and with every hour that we get nearer to a default--an historic default on the full faith and credit of the United States--we are jeopardizing our security. As to your comments regarding Lockheed, we are talking about the national security of the United States, and I am also talking about the economic security of your fellow church members and of our veterans.

I view that as a real disgrace.

This week in Texas, in San Antonio and in Austin, as we attempted to call the Veterans Administration about problems some of our veterans were

having, they said they had turned off their equipment and that they had furloughed some of the representatives we work with--I am sure that happened in your areas also--so that we cannot be the advocate we want to be for our veterans.

Additionally--I think it is around a fourth or a little over a fourth of our Federal workforce who are veterans. They are people who have served our country and have put their lives on the line, and now they are serving our country in a different way. Those are some of the families who are being paid not to work, and all of them, whether they are at work now or not, are left with great economic uncertainty about when they will get paid.

You are talking about things like cancer research or someone who is working on childhood disease.

For no good reason.

That is why it is outrageous that we could be here on this Saturday and that the Republicans have recessed the House until Monday night. They know that this default is approaching. They have outlined no plan to avoid default. They had one coming up on the floor 2 or 3 weeks ago, and they could not get agreement among their own Members about how to avoid default. Now at a time when you--like all of us who are here-- have signed a petition to reopen the government and are prepared to address the default issue right here, they have gone home.

Mr. Cantor was here on the floor a few minutes ago. He is the only one under the rules--the Republican majority leader--whom they will permit to offer the motion to continue the operation of the government. That is why we turned, as you know, to this petition of all of us coming together. We are approaching now--are headed toward--200 Members of the House. We only need about 17 or 18 Republicans to come join us so we can reopen this House and then move to address the default issue.

Because they were specifically, as you know, cut off in the rules. The rules of the House, which have existed for so many years, would have given the gentlewoman from Florida, the gentlewoman from Hawaii, or any of our colleagues who are here now from across the country the right to say, Mr. Speaker, let us vote on continuing the operation of the government.

Now, why would they deny us that traditional right as Members of the Congress--all Members, Republicans and Democrats--and give Mr. Cantor, as the Republican majority leader, the sole right to do that?

I say it is because of fear. They are fearful that this House will continue the government operations, and they can no longer hijack the country the way they have hijacked the Republican caucus and jeopardize the security of our families.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from Hawaii for the opportunity to join with her on this because the numbers she refers to is back during the summer--and Speaker Boehner acknowledged this last Sunday on ABC. There was an understanding reached between the House and the Senate that Democrats would compromise and agree to a level of government services that we think is totally unacceptable.

There was an understanding, that he acknowledged, reached between the House and the Senate that we Democrats, in order to keep the government functioning, would agree on, for a time this fall, to accept an unacceptable low number that we know won't deliver the level of services that we need for Head Start, for education, and for cancer research.

We have said we will do that now if it will keep our government open and protect our families and avoid default, open the government. And it is that motion, not a motion to give us all that we have asked for, but a motion to take the Republican budget number and put it in place as a compromise, and I might say not a very good compromise, not a favorable compromise.

We agreed to do that. The Speaker indicated that he had agreed to that, and then this Tea Party faction took control, the shutdown caucus.

Absolutely.

I want to yield back to the gentlewoman from Hawaii and in doing so thanking her for this time. The reason that it is alleged that they would not continue to stand by the agreement that was made between the House and the Senate for this bad number was they wanted to shut down the Affordable Care Act and our opportunity to get health insurance for millions of Americans. And as the gentlewoman from Hawaii knows, they have failed utterly and completely to do that. They are now in search of some other rationale, some rationalization, some justification for keeping the government shut down.

They have passed little partial bills many times.

Oh. They have sent that over there, I guess, 40 times to repeal.

Forty-four? One can lose count because they do every time you turn around.

But I thank the gentlewoman from Florida and the gentlewoman from Hawaii. This totally unjustified shutdown must end, and we must stand for American families to avoid the insecurity, the threat to them that grows by the hour.

Mr. Speaker, Federal workers, already under sustained attack from the Republican Shutdown Caucus, certainly deserve to have no further abuse, but the approval of this bill is surely one of the more bizarre moments in a truly bizarre Republican-controlled House.

These great conservative stewards of the taxpayers' dollars refuse to let our Federal workers work; and now, today, they approved legislation to pay them for not working. Getting nothing for your tax dollar. That's the new Republican-Tea Party concept of fiscal responsibility.

Of course, the Federal workers, even though they have paid leave now, are justifiably unhappy because of the uncertainty of not knowing from day to day whether they will be called to work and not knowing whether that paid leave will arrive in time to meet their bills at the end of the month.

Paying Federal workers not to work--a new level, truly, of absurdity in this politically manufactured government shutdown.

They come every 17 years. They make a strange and unpleasant noise, and then they shut down.

Like those periodic cicadas that trouble different parts of the country, an irresponsible segment of the Republican House caucus has reverted to the old GOP shenanigans of a government shutdown that they've left in some burrow for the last 17 years. That Republican ``Shutdown Caucus'' has taken over the leadership of the Republican Party. They've hijacked it.

But we cannot permit them to hijack America. This is more than a backyard nuisance. It is an attempt to interfere with the lawful rights of millions of Americans to gain access to the health insurance that they have been denied in the past.

We must stand for their right to protect their family and secure their future. We must reject those who appear every 17 years to shut down our government. And we must stand up for America.

Mr. Speaker, thirty-seven of 40 National Park Service workers at the Missions National Historical Park in San Antonio have been sent home because of this shutdown nonsense. I'd like to have them back at work, but what about the 90 percent of the Small Business Administration field employees across town who've also been sent home?

Suzanna Cabellero, president of Texas CDC, called this morning, just one of the agents processing small business loans, to tell me that this Small Business Administration shutdown is jeopardizing four of her small businesses that could create 214 Texas jobs. In two cases, the delay may cost a small business person to lose a purchase contract and earnest money. This latest Republican shutdown nonsense discriminates against small businesses; and to some of those small businesses, that discrimination may be fatal.

What if a worker is killed this afternoon in a construction accident? Who from the largely shuttered doors of Occupational Health and Safety will be there to assure that another worker doesn't experience the same fate.

Of course, the shutdown caucus is happy, gleeful, delighted that they've been able to shut down 94 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency. Their only trouble is that they didn't get the other 6 percent, because they don't really believe in protecting, with effective safeguards, the quality of the air we breathe and the water that we drink.

Instead of shutting down this whole government, this resolution says let's just have a little dismemberment. Through all of this reckless Republican maneuvering, it's not only the United States that cannot pay its bills, but it's so many of our families who are out there wondering how they're going to make the next truck payment or the next rent or mortgage payment.

Shut down the Republican shutdown caucus before it strangles America the way it has strangled the House Republican Party.

For well over a year, Republicans have forced our country to lurch from one politically manufactured crisis to another. Last year, they cost us over a billion dollars in a manufactured crisis over the debt limit. They began New Year's Day with a last-second pullback from a plunge over the fiscal cliff. And now they're up to their old shenanigans of shutting down the government--and that manufactured crisis is just a few days before the next one they've manufactured over the full faith and credit of the United States. This is no way to run a Congress, and it's no way to run a country.

The only path out is the same path that allowed us to escape the disaster on New Year's Day, the same path that we took that finally got relief for the Hurricane Sandy victims and the only way we passed the Violence Against Women Act--and that's to let majority rule apply on the floor of this House. And until we do that, we will have a crisis.

What we have to do is end the hammerlock of the ``shutdown caucus'' in the Republican Party.

When the Speaker finally lets a majority of this House, a bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats, vote on continuing the necessary operations of our government, if they'll do that tonight, it will pass in 5 minutes. It's just a question of whenever they decide to stop letting the ``shutdown caucus'' control what happens to the future of this Congress. It's the way we got relief on New Year's Day. It's the way we addressed the concerns of the Hurricane Sandy victims. It's the way we passed the Violence Against Women Act. And it's the way this country must move forward.

Mr. Speaker, this Republican ``let them starve'' bill would undermine what Professors Miguel Ferguson, Stacey Borasky, and Scott Harding recently described in an article as a ``modern antipoverty marvel.'' SNAP, they report, ``improves access to healthy meals for nearly one in three children. It also reduces chronic illness and hospitalizations and significantly reduces poverty and the severity of poverty.'' It ``keeps kids healthier, happier, and better prepared to do their best in school.'' And SNAP ``is one of the most efficient government programs, with a rigorous application process, high rates of payment accuracy, and low rates of misuse (about a 1 cent on the dollar).'' The main limitation is not that it helps feed too many people or costs too much but that almost 30 percent of those eligible get nothing.

We cannot snap our fingers and snap away poverty, but this bill will snap a vital lifeline. It must be rejected.

Mr. Speaker, 19 days, in just 19 days, millions of working Americans can apply to receive premium assistance tax credits to help them get health insurance. These are neighbors who were previously denied coverage, or who were excluded because of a preexisting condition, or because a small employer could not afford to provide health insurance.

And today's bill is about one thing, and that is to deny those Americans their lawful opportunity, on October 1, to obtain health care security. This bill is certainly not about fraud because there is already a comprehensive system to prevent overpayment and verify income.

This very afternoon, a family that suffers severe injuries in a traffic accident on I-35, or a San Antonio family that is notified of a dread disease, those families that lack affordable health insurance are suddenly overwhelmed with medical bills, and they deserve an alternative; and that alternative is coming on October 1, if these folks can't stop it.

This bill would pull the affordability rug right out from under our working families, just as they're beginning to learn about its availability.

Yes, this is the 41st time that they've tried to delay and dismantle and deny the rights of American working families. We know it won't be their last vote. In fact, next week they're so intent on blocking American families from getting health insurance coverage, they're willing to shut down the entire Federal Government.

And as if that weren't enough, next month they propose to default on the full faith and credit of the United States of America for the first time in our history for the sole purpose of denying American families that don't have insurance now some health security.

I think it's wrong. They talk about trust. Well, I don't think we should trust these zealots with our health care future.

The majority leader is absolutely right about scare tactics. If you are an uninsured American and you get a diagnosis of cancer this morning or you are hit in a head-on collision this afternoon or you have a child born with a disability, you ought to be very scared. He's also absolutely right about the need for patient- centered health care. We're concerned about that. We're concerned that patients without insurance today are centered--they're centered right into bankruptcy court. More and more Americans are faced with a health care crisis.

This bill has nothing to do with the Internal Revenue Service or the Treasury Department or restricting their rights. It's about restricting your rights. Now that we finally have a chance to protect Americans from insurance monopoly price gouging, from fine print in the contract for those who do have insurance that denies rights at the very time that you need them the most, that kind of protection about to go into effect, along with the right of so many Americans who are uninsured to go to a competitive private insurance marketplace and pick the policy that is best for their family, and for many Americans to have a premium tax credit, a tax credit that they want to deny to you.

And what alternative do they offer? Well, the best source is the official Republican Web site. I urge you--although you will find plenty of misinformation there--to go to GOP.gov because you'll find one very revealing fact. When you look there to see what the Republicans have to offer as an alternative to ObamaCare, it says two words: ``in progress.'' It's been in progress since 2 and a half years ago, when they voted the first time to repeal ObamaCare, right up to today, when they vote for the 40th time to do it.

They have only one alternative to ObamaCare, and it's called NothingCare. It's called do nothing but allow these insurance monopolies to continue to deny rights to our people.

The folks that I represent, the working families from San Antonio to Austin, they deserve to have some assistance. We have provided it to them with guaranteed

rights. Some are in effect now, and some are about to go into effect. Don't let these Republicans deny those rights to our families and replace it with NothingCare.

Mr. Speaker, think of the excitement next month as so many young Americans return to school; and what this legislation does, it would greet them with a big cut in funds to our most disadvantaged schools.

I can tell you that in Texas, Governor Perry and his cohorts will redirect these funds from disadvantaged

students faster than you can say ``oops.'' And you will find other Governors across America with a similar tepid support for public education--the same kind of people who have come to this floor and called them ``government schools'' instead of public schools--you'll find them seeing cuts to disadvantaged students as the easiest way to plug a State budget gap.

While No Child Left Behind is flawed, removing support for economically disadvantaged students is not the way to fix it. At Wheatley Middle School in San Antonio, in one of our poorest neighborhoods, title 1 funding has helped Principal Mary Olison and her team make real progress--a 30 percent improvement in math, reading and science scores; now the district's second best record in attendance; and disciplinary actions have been reduced 75 percent.

Those educators are out there struggling. Now is not the time to remove the support they need to do their very difficult jobs. Cutting this support would turn back the clock on the progress there and across America.

Title 1 funding has already been cut for the next school year. This really is a ``leave more students behind act'' that will lock in those cuts and allow State diversion of much-needed funds.

And really, this bill turns a blind eye to the achievement gap, to the racial disparities in our classrooms, and it particularly ignores the needs of students who want to learn English by cutting the English Language Learners program, which helps many of our Latino neighbors in Texas.

With the damage that has already been inflicted in my home State to public schools, now is not the time to reduce Federal aid to our schools that are the most disadvantaged.

Mr. Speaker, this bill needs to be sent to detention. It needs to be given an F. It needs to be rejected. It is not the way to strengthen education.

I believe in our public schools as a way to bind our communities together. We need to be investing more, not doing less.