Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Calvert and Chairman Frelinghuysen for their commitment to the arts. I greatly appreciate the subcommittee's efforts to fund the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The NEA's mission is to strengthen the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation. Of critical importance, the NEA has expanded their reach to help servicemembers who have been diagnosed with TBI, traumatic brain injury, and other psychological conditions. This new partnership is critically important.

The NEA Creative Forces Military Healing Arts Network is a collaboration with the Department of Defense which supports music, writing, and visual art therapy at military care facilities. They are finding that the best treatment for PTSD is yoga, which doesn't cost us anything.

The Creative Forces program places the creative arts therapies at the core of patient-centered care in military medical facilities and invests in research on the impacts and benefits of these innovative treatment methods. The cost-effective, noninvasive arts therapy of those programs rank consistently in the top five ``helpful'' and ``wish to continue'' programs on patient satisfaction surveys of the men and women who have gone through the programs, and over 85 percent of military patients said art therapy was helpful to their healing.

We may even be learning here that this might be the best thing, as Mr. Lance was pointing out, for autistic children.

But throughout the art therapy programs and the work that they are doing, our servicemen and -women are being able to transition away from the basketful of prescription drugs that they carry around with them and lived on and are rejoining their families and life. So when they wheel out of that healing, that psychological skill-building, self- expression, and self-esteem that comes from these programs, that obviously is certainly something that we need to continue.

As part of the NEA's mission to increase access to the arts for all Americans, Creative Forces enables more servicemembers, veterans, and military families to benefit from creative art therapies and community arts activities.

NEA is so cheap it is surprising. For the small amount of money we put into it, we would get about $9 billion back and many people who have been employed. We don't do anything with a better return than the money we spend for the arts.

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

For me, this morning, July 28, could be the beginning of a new spirit in the House of Representatives because of what happened last night in the Senate. Since we are talking about healthcare for veterans, I want to just take a moment to talk about healthcare for all Americans.

Last night, we saw a remarkable thing happen. We have had a poisonous atmosphere around healthcare in the United States for the past 7 years. We are the last industrial country on the planet to provide healthcare for the people who count on us for that kind of help and support. We can now give that up.

I hope we can take the majority leader at his word that he sees no further use in trying to beat this bill to death and that we can work together to improve it and get on to other things which we are so in need of.

But I do want to say that I appreciate very much the votes last night. I think Senator McCain showed, once again, that he is America's hero. And Senators Murkowski and Collins certainly are heroines of mine and I think let us know that women in positions of power can be counted on.

So, yesterday, in the Rules Committee, the majority passed a martial law rule granting themselves fast-track authority so they could get anything through, which I think scared even the Senate.

I read some news reports claiming this was a major victory. It was not a victory for either side fighting viciously over how we want healthcare to be given to our citizens, but it was certainly a victory for the American people, hundreds of whom stood last night here on the Capitol Grounds outside of the Senate begging to be able to continue their healthcare.

Imagine somebody with cancer, going through all of the pain and agony they have to go through, and wondering every day what in the world we are going to do here. Are they going to be left without healthcare, left without care that they can afford?

So I think, without a doubt, this is a good morning for all of us who are in the Congress of the United States to get together and to do better work. And I know of no agency, frankly, that

needs more attention than the Veterans Administration.

My personal experience with them has been somewhat like Whack-a-Mole: we think we have something settled and then suddenly we don't. We have to be advocates for every veteran in our district, directly to the VA, personally, oftentimes simply to get the most simple kind of treatment done for our veterans.

It is my wholehearted wish, and has been for some time, that we will get the Veterans Administration out of the building business, where they are abysmal failures, and let them concentrate on healthcare for veterans, which is their number one issue.

I am very pleased--and let me echo what my colleague, Mr. Collins, said--with leadership both in the House and the Senate running the Veterans' Affairs Committees now. Dr. Roe has been an exemplary friend to all of us and understands exactly what we are doing.

So I think this is important, as Mr. Collins has pointed out. Veterans Choice has not been very popular in my district. It is so complicated and so complex that it takes a lot of hand-holding even to use it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support the underlying bill we will be voting on today. I wish I were able to say that more often.

The bill will fund the Department of Veterans Affairs Choice Program for 6 months and authorize a number of leases for major medical facilities throughout the country, and I echo its major importance.

The next rule we will be considering contains martial law authority that will allow the majority to bring up any bill they want with hardly any notice at all, and I hope we will not use that.

It has been a long week. Let's end it on a bipartisan note with a strong vote in support of this bill before us to help veterans across America.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule. I certainly thank the gentleman from Washington, my friend, for his kindness. I think he is one of the best Members we have, but I am going to have to disagree with Mr. Newhouse today.

When Speaker Ryan assumed the gavel, he told the American people that he wanted to have ``a process that is more open, more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory.''

When the majority took control of both the Congress and the White House, they again promised to abide by standard congressional procedure.

But we are here, 3 months from the end of the fiscal year. The majority hasn't passed a budget resolution, and legislation moves at a glacial pace. The majority working to rush through a massive minibus before any individual appropriations bills have been considered on the floor is also a mistake.

This may sound pedantic, but we do have rules.

Every one of us wants to improve our security, but this bill, I am afraid, is a little more than smoke and mirrors. The increase in defense spending under this bill will never see the light of day.

That is because we operate under the Budget Control Act, and that mandates that any breach of the defense cap, which this bill does, will trigger an across-the-board sequestration cut of all defense accounts, making what we do here a useless exercise, I am afraid.

The majority has also inserted an amendment to provide $1.6 billion President Trump requested to begin construction of the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

This is surely just the beginning of making taxpayers pay for the entire wall, which experts have estimated could cost as much as $21 billion, with nary a peso from Mexico. If we are investing $1.6 billion now, I see no reason why they do not plan to go on to reach the $21 billion expenditure.

Let me put that in some perspective: $21 billion could be used to double the Federal investments in public schools. Think of that. Just the money to build that wall, it could provide 6 million people with healthcare under Medicaid, it could buy school lunches for tens of millions of low-income children. But these investments are not a priority for this majority.

President Trump's own budget director famously said that it isn't worth feeding hungry children if the nutrition does not improve their school performance, and that Meals on Wheels ``sounds great,'' but doesn't work.

I never thought I would hear either of those things come from the mouth of a Federal official. The idea that we should not feed hungry children unless their school work improves, frankly, I am baffled by that, let me say it that way.

The opposition to the wall is bipartisan. Republican Representative Hurd from Texas, a former CIA officer, sits on the Homeland Security Committee and represents the largest border district in the State of Texas. He testified before the Rules Committee late Monday night against it, saying, ``having a one-size-fits-all solution to border security makes no sense.'' Yet this amendment was included without debating the merits on the floor and without giving Members an up-or- down vote.

Let me explain that a little bit. This amendment is in the bill, but there will be no vote on it. It has been what we call self-executed to keep people from being recorded in any way, whether they are for or against the wall.

The last statistic that I saw from the American public is that 68 percent of them oppose it. They will never know whether their Representatives did or not. It is a sort of a bait-and-switch idea.

Mr. Speaker, immigration has enriched our country beyond measure. It is what has allowed our country to shape the world, rather than to fear it. A wall will lock the United States away from the rest of the world.

The President's new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, wrote online: ``Walls don't work. Never have. Never will.''

We don't know whether he is going to change his mind about that or not, but that is what he said.

One of our famous Republican Presidents that everybody knew and loved, Ronald Reagan, 30 years ago last month stood in West Berlin and demanded that another wall be torn down.

I said in the Rules Committee yesterday and I will say it again here this afternoon: if the President and the majority build this wall, it, too, will be torn down, not by someone crossing the border or by an outside force. It will crumble because the public understands in a way that this President and majority do not, that our Nation does not barricade itself away from the rest of the world.

We will not build walls to keep us in. What kind of superpower would we be if we built a wall around the outside of our Nation and crumbled from the inside because the money we put on the wall kept us from updating our infrastructure, which is in such terrible shape, and a shredded social safety net?

None of us want to find that out, but the majority is putting us on such a path.

Just yesterday, President Trump announced a ban on transgender servicemembers serving in the military. It appears today that he made that announcement all on his own and that neither the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Pentagon had any idea that he was going to do that.

The announcement came 69 years to the day that President Truman desegregated our military. Think about that for a minute. Sixty-nine years ago, on the very day that President Trump said transgender people couldn't serve, was the day President Truman integrated the military services.

This is an insult to the approximately 15,000 transgender soldiers who sacrifice for our country every day. Transgender servicemembers are being attacked from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Just days ago, Republicans joined Democrats to defeat an amendment that would bar transgender servicemembers from receiving the necessary healthcare that they deserve. I will note that these same treatments would have been available to other servicemembers under this amendment. Apparently to the majority, it is not about the treatment, but the person who receives it.

The amendment is especially cruel when you consider that a Pentagon report has found that gender transition-related treatment costs between $2.4 and $8.4 million a year. That is the cost of just four of the President's trips to Mar-a-Lago. Think about that: several millions dollars to go to Mar-a-Lago would have paid for operations for transgender persons.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article from USA Today that details this fact.

[From USA Today, July 26, 2017]

OnPolitics Today: Trump's Mar-a-Lago Trips Cost More Than Trans

Soldiers' Health Care

(By Josh Hafner)

President Trump tweeted this morning that the U.S. military

wouldn't allow transgender troops ``in any capacity,'' an

apparent rejection of the military's roughly 6,000 trans

troops and the Obama-era policy that embraced them.

The U.S. ``cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical

costs and disruption that transgender in the military would

entail,'' Trump said.

Except trans troops don't really cost that much, as many

soon pointed out.

A report for the Pentagon last year found that transition-

related care would cost between about $2.4 and $8.4 million

per year--less than 0.14% of the military's medical budget.

That's roughly the cost of four of Trump's trips to Mar-A-

Lago, GQ noted, even using a conservative estimate of $2

million per trip. And it's way less than the $84 million

spent on Viagra and similar meds by the Department of Defense

in 2014, as others also said.

It was, as Sen. John McCain noted, ``yet another example of

why major policy announcements should not be made via

Twitter.''

I believe all of our soldiers deserve our thanks and support. They are Americans. They don't need to be attacked based on who they are.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, it is also outrageous--and I saved this for the end--that the majority stripped from the bill Congresswoman Barbara Lee's bipartisan amendment to repeal the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Until this AUMF, which, as I said, came into law in 2001, is rescinded and replaced, the President of the United States can usurp our power and effectively declare war without Congress' concurrence. In fact, that has already happened.

Matters of war are the most serious issues that Congress considers. We should not--and we don't want to--shirk those responsibilities. We want to fulfill our constitutional duties.

Yet Speaker Ryan removed it from the bill without any debate or single vote because he was afraid of it. He replaced it with weaker language requiring a 30-day study. After those 30 days, we are not assured of anything at all, just a study.

That is not the type of open and transparent process that the Speaker promised. More than just bad process, it silences the debate we need to have. All Americans, especially our men and women in uniform, deserve better from us, as they volunteered to save us with their very lives.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gallego).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price), the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barragan).

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to allow the House to consider Representative Lee's AUMF amendment--authority to use military force. This will provide all Members the chance for an up-or-down vote, which we have, thus far, been denied.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) to discuss our proposal.

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, if we hadn't had this last election and the campaign that went with it, we wouldn't be talking about any wall. One of the candidates threw out that he would like to have a wall and was sure--he gave us the absurd notion that somehow Mexico would pay for it.

Not many of us believed that, but I will tell you, now that we have put in this $1.6 billion for this wall, I will bet you that we are going to finish it, and we don't know how much it costs--somewhere between $20 billion and $40 billion for a wall.

Now, if I have heard correctly what my colleagues have said over there, the walls are working already, the ones they have got. There are walls there. I

heard San Diego had three. So the idea, I guess, if one works, we will build us another one. Oh, my goodness.

This funding bill that we are talking about spending on a wall is needed to repair roads and bridges and bring down the cost of education, but the majority refuses to have debate on the AUMF, something that is critically important, life and death to many people who live in this country who are presently in the armed services. This amendment should have been included here.

And I appreciate what my colleague, Mr. Sanford, said. He is absolutely right. But if we were to get a new AUMF, it would put Congress back into its duty to declare war. That is something that the Constitution gave us that we no longer have.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentlewoman from Wyoming for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us today would put some of our most sensitive lands at risk and limit the voices of experts, all to further construction of dangerous projects that could harm local communities.

First, H.R. 2883 undermines the National Environmental Policy Act and tips the scales in favor of massive, controversial oil and gas pipeline and electric transmission projects. Transboundary projects like this often travel for hundreds of miles, last for decades, and pass through sensitive and Native lands and important aquifers. And, as we all know, pipelines leak.

That is why there is currently a rigorous Federal review process that takes into account the impact of these projects on the environment and the communities along their route.

Today, in order to construct an oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline, or an electrical transmission line that crosses the U.S. border with Canada or Mexico, a Presidential permit must first be obtained, as well as additional approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission-- FERC--the Department of Energy, or the Department of Defense, depending on the type of pipeline.

This review process helps us to understand the environmental impact of these projects and it allows communities and landowners along the route to weigh in with their concerns. All of this helps to keep communities safe from hazardous substances that, if spilled or ignited, could have catastrophic consequences. Yet the majority is proposing this measure to severely limit that rigorous review.

The bill effectively exempts these massive projects from environmental and safety review under the National Environmental Policy Act. It narrows the approval process and environmental review to just the ``cross-border segment'' of projects that physically cross the border with Canada or Mexico rather than, presently, the entire trans- boundary project. So inside the United States, anything goes.

Instead of requiring an agency to affirmatively find a project is in the public interest, the bill also places a burden of proof on the opponents of the project to show that it is not in the public interest. If that wasn't bad enough, the legislation would also give new life to the controversial projects that have already been denied, for very good reason, by allowing permits to be resubmitted under this sham process.

Second, H.R. 2910 would supercharge the natural gas pipeline approval process, putting private property rights in jeopardy and hindering important environmental reviews.

The bill gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission almost complete authority and severely limits the input of expert entities tasked with protecting the environment, our natural resources, and public health.

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind those watching today just how streamlined the natural gas pipeline approval process already is. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is basically a rubber-stamp entity. It almost never denies a pipeline project. On average, 88 percent of projects are approved within 1 year, and then we think about the consequences later.

In fact, FERC officials have testified that what is mostly slowing down the applications is that the applicants themselves fail to submit the necessary information to perform congressionally mandated project reviews. So this bill is a solution in search of a problem.

Third, H.R. 218 revives an ill-advised proposal to build a road to the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and its world-class wetlands.

This proposal has been, as pointed out for a number of decades, rejected by multiple State and Federal agencies on numerous occasions over the past 30 years. It has been exhaustively studied time and time again, and, every single time, the results have been clear. The road is not the most viable option for the residents of King Cove and would do irreparable damage to the refuge.

Yet the majority is ignoring three decades of expert analysis and public input in an effort to green light this damaging road through a congressionally designated wilderness area. More efficient and viable options exist, including the addition of a heliport and construction of a new airport, which we should be focusing on because a road is the wrong approach.

Mr. Speaker, we all know this, but I think we do need to be reminded from time to time that we are the stewards of our environment and this planet and the land only while we are alive. None of us ever really own it. We do, however, have an obligation to protect it, care for it, and make sure that it exists for future generations. These bills fail that test.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Pascrell of New Jersey's Bring Jobs Home Act, H.R. 685. This bill will close the tax loophole that rewards companies from moving jobs overseas, while providing a tax credit to companies that move jobs back to the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) to discuss our proposal.

I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, the American people may be scratching their heads wondering why, with everything going on in the world, we are prioritizing bills that put our environment at risk--bills the Senate may never take up.

Let me remind them that the majority is just doing the bidding of an administration that has shown a complete disregard for air, water, and land. The administration has already proposed a budget that would slash the Environmental Protection Agency by 32 percent. This would harm not only conservation and climate efforts, but thousands of jobs nationwide.

As a microbiologist, I know firsthand the importance of science in our legislative process, yet the majority has refused to give science and facts their rightful place in policy debates that we have.

From drastically reducing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, and by discrediting climate change, to attempting to eliminate safeguards for our genetic privacy, the majority and this administration have worked hand in hand to ruthlessly roll back the scientific advancements that we have made.

It is shameful that we are here today considering bills that would silence experts and risk the health and safety of our communities.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question on the rule and the bills, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed Roll Call vote numbers 379, 380, and 381. Had I been present, I would have voted Aye on all three votes.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, all of us mourn the death of Kate Steinle, tragically shot and killed in San Francisco in 2015. Indeed, there isn't a parent anywhere who doesn't worry constantly about the well-being and the health and the safety of a child. And we all know, even though we may not have lost our own, we have deep sympathy with those who do. But as the Cato Institute has outlined, the legislation before us today would not have prevented that tragedy.

As the Cato Institute has said, the alleged shooter ``did not end up in San Francisco due to lax border security, and the case actually shows the opposite. In recent years, Border Patrol caught him each time he attempted to cross.''

He was only in the city because the U.S. Justice Department failed to do its job, and that is why Cato has called this bill, ``a waste of Federal resources.'' Let me say that again, Mr. Speaker, that these are the words of the Cato Institute, a group founded by the well-known conservative Charles Koch. Cato could not have been more clear when they said it this week: ``Kate's Law would not have helped Kate.''

Now, our country has listened as President Donald J. Trump called Mexican immigrants ``criminals, drug dealers, and rapists.'' The public has watched him promote the formation of a deportation force to tear apart immigrants from their families and sign an executive order directing Federal resources toward the construction of a wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, where there is one mostly already that has not done that much deterring, but that is despite the fact that Federal spending on border security over the last few years has been at the highest level that our country has ever seen. It seems the majority has now taken a page from the President's playbook, apparently trying to turn his dangerous rhetoric into law.

It is shameful that they are prioritizing a bill that is completely unnecessary, since current law already imposes adequately severe penalties for illegal reentry, including enhanced penalties for criminal offenses. It is already covered, Mr. Speaker, but we do have something we need to fill the afternoon since the health bill failed. All the while, the majority is ignoring the many, many, many major issues facing the Nation today.

Now, I know, and we all know, that the bill wasn't the only thing they were hoping to ram through here before we adjourned for the district work period. They also hoped to pass their healthcare repeal bill so quickly before leaving town that the American people wouldn't notice; but, frankly, even as I say that, they have noticed, as I understand now, that the approval rating for that bill is 12 percent. They have noticed. I think what they have noticed is that they are going to kill Medicaid.

The reason they wanted to do this in a hurry, repeal healthcare first, was in order to fulfill their tax bill promise of corporate tax cuts as well as tax cuts for the richest people in the United States. They wanted to take from the health bill, the expanded Medicare money, $80 billion to pay for tax cuts. The devastation that that would create, I think most American people understand it.

If they have a loved one in a nursing home, that means that, since 64 percent of the cost of nursing care is borne by Medicaid, that they would very likely have to bring the person home.

It means that 22 million people would lose their health insurance. You know, we just say that, ``22 million people.'' Let me put that number in some perspective. That number, 22 million, is more than the population of Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, and Wyoming combined. That is pretty impressive, isn't it?

In February, our President Trump said: ``Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.'' Well, Mr. Speaker and Mr. President, those of us on our side who worked for more than a year to craft the Affordable Care Act knew that very well. I was chair of the Rules Committee at the time, and just the Rules Committee heard from 46 different Members of Congress over the course of three meetings which, together, lasted more than 20 hours, one of them a full Saturday of hearings.

So, together with the work done by the other committees of jurisdiction, the healthcare reform law received such a thorough vetting--and I want to get this on the record because I hear all the time it was written behind closed doors and strange people and nobody knew what it was and that we were all surprised. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Bill Kristol proclaimed on FOX News: ``This is the most thoroughly debated piece of legislation in my memory in Washington.''

I feel like I need to say that again, but I won't take the time, but how important it is. But those of us who were there knew it. We knew how many committee meetings were held on this legislation.

On the bill you are talking about from your side, the majority side, not a single committee has heard it. I wager that the vast majority of the Republicans--who deserve to see it--have not even seen that bill, and that is a tragedy. We do not operate the United States of America that way.

So, Mr. Speaker, there is no comparison between the open, the transparent, and lengthy process that we went through to craft the Affordable Care Act--which, by the way, was written by experts--and what the majority is trying to do with this disastrous repeal bill.

And while I am at it, so many times when I was doing the rule on the repeal bills--and, you know, repeal and replace, repeal and replace. We know now that all those 7 years and those more than 60 votes that we paid for while we are running the House, that all this time there was no replacement. They still don't have a replacement. If that wasn't a hoax on the American people, I don't know what was. But the process we are seeing now is defined by backroom deals and secrecy and a complete disregard for regular order.

And I understand that, between now and tomorrow afternoon, there will be a lot of big deals changing hands so that we won't know next week what is there anyway, but we wait to see the new CBO score and see what that says.

Nearly every President since Theodore Roosevelt tried to enact healthcare reform. That is a long time. Teddy Roosevelt tried it and many

Presidents after him. But after decades of failed attempts and false starts, President Obama, working with a Democratic Congress, was finally able to deliver.

The majority should work with us again. We are willing to do that. And what we would really like to see you do is take the ACA and the problems that it has and let's work together and improve that law, which has already been in effect now for a number of years, since 2014, and we could just move ahead and get on with things that are terribly important to us.

We wish that you would do that instead of trying to dismantle it. If it were dismantled, it would disrupt the markets. It would harm the sick and disproportionately impact those in nursing homes.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I inquire if my colleague has more speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, President Trump campaigned on the promise of bringing jobs back home and removing barriers to job creation. But despite these promises, President Trump's budget does the complete opposite. It cuts job training programs by 39 percent, and its draconian spending cuts would lead to massive job losses.

My colleagues will be happy to hear that I have an amendment that will ensure that the President keeps his promise of bringing jobs back home.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Pascrell's Bring Jobs Home Act, H.R. 685.

H.R. 685 will close a tax loophole that rewards companies for moving jobs overseas, while providing a tax credit to companies that move jobs back to the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell) to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is the 38th closed rule allowing no amendments that House Republicans have brought to the floor this year alone, and it is only June. At this rate, the majority is well on its way to becoming the most closed Congress in history.

Regular order seems to be a thing of the past under this leadership, with bills coming to the House floor, as these two are, for a vote without even going through the committee process. The immigration bills we considered this week didn't even go through regular order. The disastrous healthcare repeal bill, which would impact one-sixth of the Nation's economy, didn't get a single hearing, and hardly anybody saw it.

No experts were ever called to discuss its impacts, and it was jammed through the Chamber last month without even a score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office outlining its costs or its impacts. The Senate has also completely bypassed the committee process.

I was proud to bring the Affordable Care Act, as I said earlier, to the House floor in 2009, as chair of the Rules Committee. That process couldn't have been more different.

Let me remind those watching today that the House held 79 bipartisan hearings and markups on health insurance reform in 2009 and 2010. During this time, House Members heard from 181 witnesses from both sides of the aisle, considered 239 Democratic and Republican amendments, and accepted 121 of them.

That process was entirely different from what we go through today. In fact, a lot of the Members of the House are really cut out of most of the process. The idea of getting an amendment is really pretty rare.

The legislation we consider here should be able to withstand scrutiny, but, more and more, the Nation's business is done in the dark, or by a few people.

Let's get out of the back rooms, Mr. Speaker, and let legislators of both parties do their job under an open process. That is what the Speaker promised when he took the gavel, and it is what all the books and Rules of the House of Representatives desire, and it is certainly what the American people deserve.

Mr. Speaker, we should not consider a bill that would cost tens of millions of people to lose health insurance, and not consider the anti- immigration bills before us today.

So I am going to urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, on the rule, and the bill, and hope for better days.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the service of two members of the Rochester, New York community, Rochester Institute of Technology President William Destler and his wife Doctor Rebecca Johnson, Associate of the University.

The Rochester area is home to an intelligent and curious community, thanks to residents who have dedicated their lives to the advancement of higher education. Doctors Destler and Johnson are no exception and thanks to their efforts, Rochester continues to be home to some of the finest institutes of higher learning that have produced notable alumni for generations.

Assuming the Presidency in 2007, Doctor Destler became responsible for a world-renowned university that includes nearly 19,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign nations. One hundred and twenty one thousand alumni around the world are proud to call RIT their alma mater and, at one point, Rochester as their home. RIT is also the third largest producer of undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math among all private universities in the United States.

During his tenure as President, Doctor Destler recognized the symbiotic relationship between RIT and the city of Rochester, serving on multiple civic engagement boards including the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce and the Golisano Family Foundation. Leading his students by example, Doctor Destler is an international authority on high-power microwave sources and is best known for his pioneering work in the collective acceleration of heavy ions. Under his watch, female enrollment has increased 25 percent and international enrollment has increased an astounding 120 percent. Forty-one percent of the freshman class is deaf and hard of hearing, international and African, Asian, Latino, and Native American. These numbers alone are a testament to the strength through diversity of RIT.

Doctor Destler is one-half of an unparalleled team. He is joined by his wife, Doctor Rebecca Johnson, Associate of the University. In a time when bipartisan discussion is often contentious, Doctor Johnson has served on the committee for the Gray Matter series, which aims to promote civil discussion of divergent views on important topics. She is also the former president of the Board of Directors of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence and continues to serve on the board in leadership roles. Her passion also extends to civic engagement, best demonstrated through initiatives such as RIT's 2016 ``Roar the Vote.'' Thanks to her efforts, RIT has made impressive strides toward energy sustainability though programs like the greenRITnetwork and FoodShare.

Over the course of their ten-year term, Doctors Destler and Johnson have truly come to embody the mantra of RIT, ``The making of a living and the living of life.'' It is with sincere appreciation that we thank Doctors Destler and Johnson for their selfless dedication to higher education, RIT, and the proud city of Rochester. We wish them the best in their future endeavors and affirm that they will always be at home in our community.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank my colleague for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, 7 years ago, I brought the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to the floor of the House as chairwoman of the House Rules Committee. This law was a statement from Congress on behalf of the American people that unchecked corporate greed will never again bring the United States of America to financial collapse.

My colleague began his speech this morning by saying that this law had not worked, but I am not aware of major bank failures or bank failures of any kind since we passed it, and I would say, indeed, this law has worked.

Since it has been enacted, our economy has had over 80 consecutive months of private sector job growth. That is pretty good. In fact, it is a record-setting streak. More than 16 million jobs have been created, and business lending has been increased by 75 percent. I am not getting all the complaints that I used to get that they could not borrow money from banks, particularly the small businesses.

Along the way, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established under this law has helped 29 million people in all of our 50 States to receive nearly $12 billion in relief from companies that engaged in irresponsible or predatory practices.

One group that sent us a letter begging us not to do away with Dodd- Frank was the Veterans of Foreign Wars who said that far too often their veterans were the victims of predatory lenders--shysters, people not telling them the truth--and that is exactly what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established to do.

You can't argue about whether or not it has been a success if 29 million people in 50 States have gotten back $12 billion in relief of bad practices. But this legislation completely will do away with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the only thing we have left to protect Main Street and the small investors.

These gains weren't a coincidence, Mr. Speaker. They were the result of the Dodd-Frank law. Gutting Wall Street reform will be a historic giveaway to special interests.

The Wall Street firms who plunged our country to the brink, in 2008, would be free once again to take advantage of consumers and force middle class families to go it alone, without the protections this bill has provided them.

The CHOICE Act is the wrong choice for consumers and families. Instead of standing with financial lobbyists, I urge the majority to uphold the trust of the people we all represent.

Five years ago, Democrats and Republicans came together to almost unanimously pass my bill to end insider trading in Congress. The STOCK Act passed this Chamber by a vote of 417-2, one of the most bipartisan bills of that entire session of Congress.

It wasn't easy. I led a 6-year fight to get it signed into law after learning that Members of Congress and their staffs were abusing their positions by making money from the information that they gleaned and that was not available to everybody else in America. They gleaned this information while

working on behalf of the people whose information they were stealing. It took a ``60 Minutes'' investigation on television and a groundswell of public support, but the bill became a reality.

For me, upholding the people's trust is the most sacred responsibility I have as a Member of Congress. That is why I am waging a new battle to strengthen the STOCK Act, after learning that some in this Congress have used legal loopholes to get around this law.

Once again, we see the importance of investigative journalism and a free press, which has shined a light on the fact that some Members of Congress have purchased private, discounted stock deals and taken a part in initial public offerings outside of the United States. These special deals are not available to the general public.

All this would have remained in the dark, had the STOCK Act not put into place a new requirement to timely disclose sales and purchases of stock. This is precisely the kind of outrageous conduct we intended to outlaw under the STOCK Act. It plays directly into the public's most cynical view of Congress.

This, Mr. Speaker, comes at a time when just 20 percent of the public approves of how Congress is doing its job under the majority's leadership. That is according to the latest figures from Gallup.

This Chamber put aside partisanship and took a strong, bipartisan stand against this abhorrent behavior just a few years ago. It has become increasingly clear that we need to act again today to hold ourselves accountable to both the letter and the spirit of the STOCK Act law.

We are not doing that today. Once again, we are taking away the regulations because some people find them so terribly abhorrent, but they protect the small investor and the people in the banks. We surely will never, I hope, see the day where we will ask the taxpayers of the United States to bail out the enormously rich, big banks. One of the worst things of that whole era was not a single fraudulent banker went to jail.

Just 535 of us in a country of more than 300 million people have been chosen to serve on the American people's behalf in Congress. It is a sacred responsibility, one we should not be squandering, doing the bidding of the financial lobbyists or Wall Street firms, who are the ones behind the CHOICE Act.

The majority should stop fulfilling the wish list of Wall Street and act on behalf of millions of Americans outraged by insider trading and other chicanery that still permeates the halls of Congress today. This Chamber must take action so that Americans recognize we came here to represent them, not enrich ourselves.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney) the distinguished ranking member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investments.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional minute to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of my colleague if he has further speakers?

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

With each passing day, we learn more about the tangled web of conflicts of interest and links to Russia and the Trump administration. Just last week we learned that President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, attempted to establish a back channel of communications with Russia and the Trump transition team before they were even inaugurated.

Tomorrow, former FBI Director James Comey will likely testify that President Trump attempted to influence the FBI's investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian Government.

Who knows what further ties to Russia we will uncover from his testimony.

Without President Trump's tax returns, we simply have no way of knowing if he himself has financial ties to Russia, as news reports have suggested. The American people deserve to know whether or not our President has any business dealings with Russia or other foreign governments. It is imperative that we prevent the White House from becoming another arm of the Trump organization.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Eshoo's bill, H.R. 305, which would require Presidents and major party nominees for the Presidency to release their tax returns.

If the President has nothing to hide, including financial interests or business dealings with Russia, then he should freely release his tax returns to reassure the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the text of my amendment, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, let me remind the majority why we enacted the Wall Street reform in the first place.

Our country was plunged into the worst recession since the Great Depression after big Wall Street firms played Russian roulette with our future for years. During the 2008 financial crash, more than 8 million Americans lost their jobs, $13 trillion in wealth vanished overnight, and 11 million homes were lost.

After years of excesses and dodging regulation, the financial firms were finally brought under control by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The perverse notion of too big to fail was finally ended, and the financial playing field was tilted back toward consumers.

We have all seen the results of the law in the form of record-setting private sector job growth, millions of new jobs, and historic rates of business lending. It is beyond me why anyone in the world would want to repeal this law and threaten this progress. Instead of doing the bidding of the financial lobbyists who don't really care for the law, we should be acting to uphold the trust of the people who sent us here.

This begins with passing the End Congressional Stock Market Abuse Act to bring an end to the egregious use of exclusive stock deals and foreign initial public offerings by Members of Congress.

The American people must be able to trust what we are doing here and trust that it is right for them without concern that we are using our position to enrich ourselves.

My bill would enhance the STOCK Act, which passed the Chamber virtually unanimously--two ``no'' votes--in 2012, with provisions that I think we could all agree on: no exclusive stock deals for Members of Congress, no initial public offerings, regardless of where they are offered.

Mr. Speaker, that is what we should be focusing on today, not dismantling a law that has brought financial security to millions of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the rule, to oppose the underlying legislation, the ``Wrong'' CHOICE Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, all of us in this Chamber today support the goals of this legislation. We can and we must do more to protect children from the plague of sexual assault and the prevalence of child pornography permeating society today.

I am particularly glad to see such bipartisan support for H.R. 1973. The young athletes that represent the United States on the world's stage at the Olympics must not be taken advantage of by predatory coaches and doctors who should be mentoring them. In fact, no child anywhere should be taken advantage of; but this bill makes some commonsense changes that strengthen the reporting of abuse and puts in place policies that prevent future violations, and I am hopeful it will become law.

It staggers the mind to believe that this assault on those children had gone on for 20 years, and some 400 children were victimized for it, and not a single adult anywhere around ever brought attention to it. In fact, we owe a great newspaper in Indiana for telling us about it, so be sure to read a good newspaper every day.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of agreement about the goals of the bills before us today, but that wasn't the case 20 days ago when the majority rushed through its partisan, slapdash healthcare bill repeal to rip away healthcare from millions of people. They passed the bill without holding a single hearing, listening to any experts, or, most importantly, waiting for a score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The Congressional Budget Office tells us what the bill will cost, how many people it will help, how many people it would hurt, something that, with healthcare, would have been vitally important.

But while the lack of a score didn't prohibit them from holding a vote, it did, apparently, prevent the majority from sending the bill over to the Senate. Mr. Speaker, this process is completely backwards and a major breakdown of the integrity of the legislative process.

Most schoolchildren know that, when a bill passes the House, you send it to the Senate. You don't hide it in a drawer for weeks until you finally get the information from the Congressional Budget Office that you should have had before you brought the bill to the floor for a vote.

This is no way to develop a plan that will impact one-sixth of the Nation's gross domestic product, and the process has finally laid bare one of the biggest political hoaxes in recent memory: that notion of repeal and replace. How often did we hear that over the last 7 years?

For the last 7 years, the majority voted more than 60 times to undermine the Affordable Care Act without having a thing in the world to replace it with, and now they are pushing the false notion that the Affordable Care Act is collapsing. The reality is that some States dealing with limited insurers never implemented the full benefits of the law or enacted the exchange under the Affordable Care Act, which would have cut their costs.

Mr. Speaker, one of my proudest moments as a Member of Congress was chairing the House Rules Committee and bringing the Affordable Care Act to the House floor. Almost every President since Theodore Roosevelt had attempted to give healthcare to the American people. Millions of people are now waking up to the benefits of this healthcare, and our Nation's uninsured rate is at its lowest level in more than 50 years. Why would you rip that away?

For the first time in a generation, we are actually slowing the yearly growth of healthcare costs. A poll released just this last month found that 61 percent of the public supports keeping and improving the Affordable Care Act. That is in stark contrast to the 17 percent approval rating for the repeal bill that was voted on here several weeks ago.

Mr. Speaker, I wish the majority would stop turning a deaf ear to the people it represents. The American people have been marching and calling and writing against this bill in numbers none of us have ever seen before. A bad process led to a bad product.

Mr. Speaker, none of us believe that the ACA was perfect. I urge the majority to take the bill out of the drawer and shred it. Let's get together, strengthen our healthcare system and the Affordable Care Act. It is exactly what our constituents deserve.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, the majority of Americans want us to work together to improve upon the successes of the Affordable Care Act. We should be expanding access to care and implementing the kind of reforms that will keep American families healthy, not kicking millions of Americans off their insurance to fulfill a deceptive campaign promise, as the Republican healthcare repeal bill will do. Expanding paid sick leave to the 45 percent of American workers who don't have access to it would be a great start.

Each week, up to 3 million employees go to work sick, infecting their coworkers and customers and delaying their own recovery. The benefits of allowing working Americans to earn paid sick leave are undeniable. It slows the spread of disease, lowers healthcare costs, and increases productivity.

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that would allow us to also bring up Representative DeLauro's bill, H.R. 1516, which would allow Americans to have paid sick time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear after The Indianapolis Star uncovered the widespread abuse scandal that Congress must act to implement consistent, stricter laws governing the reporting of abuses to our Nation's athletes and to all our children. Once again, The Indianapolis Star has shown us the importance of investigative journalism and a free press.

Many of these athletes are too young and are not empowered to speak out against authority figures when they are hurt or abused by them. But each of us as Members of Congress is in a position to do something about it, and we must.

Mr. Speaker, again, I urge my colleagues to listen to the voices of the American people before hurling our Nation further toward disaster with this dangerous healthcare bill.

The majority hasn't held any hearings or gotten input from experts, advocates, or patients. They are ignoring the opposition from groups like AARP, American Medical Association, March of Dimes, and American Hospital Association.

The score later today from the Congressional Budget Office won't change the underlying facts of this bill. It will gut protections for people with preexisting conditions. It will gut essential health benefits, kick millions of people off of health insurance, and place a crushing age tax on those aged 50 to 64 whose premiums will go up. It will also cut billions from Medicaid to pay for a major tax cut for the wealthy. That is $880 billion that they want to take away from Medicaid to give to the rich and corporations. This is so unAmerican, I stumbled over saying it.

Mr. Speaker, a bad process has led to a bad bill. We should be doing what the American people want and improving the Affordable Care Act.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank my colleague for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, I was fortunate enough to bring the ACA to the floor after years of working on it and experts writing it. It had such incredible things in it. I think it would behoove us this morning to talk about what every one of us who has health insurance is going to lose because the benefits of the ACA accrued to all of us.

Now, you need to know first that we are going to lose the fact that 85 cents of every premium dollar will go for health care. It will go back to insurance profits. We are also going to lose the fact that families could no longer go bankrupt because of health care.

The largest cause of bankruptcy are families with medical bills, and the ACA took care of that. Nobody ever talks about that much, but if a single person spent $4,500 a year on health care, a family $12,500, the insurance companies picked up the rest of it.

How about that? That is a pretty good loss that we are going to face. So why in the world are we rushing into this thing?

Well, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, verified as recently as last Saturday evening in Pennsylvania that we have to do this first because $800 billion has to come out of health care so that they could do the tax bill with great corporate tax relief for the 1 percent. So as you lose your health care, your ability to go to the doctor, and your preexisting conditions because risk pools don't work, be comforted by the fact that we are in the hands of people who put the needs of corporations and wealthy people ahead of the citizens of the United States.

Just in case you think people aren't paying any attention, for the first time in my life, my office has 185 applications for six seats as interns in the summertime. It is unheard of. Calls in my office have gone from about 10 a day to 80, all of them talking about this. I have never seen political suicide in my life like I am seeing today. I think our leader put it so succinctly: you are tattooing that on your foreheads.

Now, those people out there who have really gotten sort of used to this, all we have heard all the way through is that this is going to fall apart. The problems going on with the ACA right now are that the insurance companies have uncertainty because of what has been going on here.

I need to bring up one of the greatest hoaxes in America in any institution that passes laws. For over 60 times, you brought to the floor of this House and we debated bills to do away with the health care. ``Repeal and replace,'' you shouted. Millions and millions of dollars' worth of time on this floor were spent on what was absolutely a hoax because you had no repeal-and-replace plan. It was simply all talk, and now you have got to rush through this so you can do your big tax bill.

I am sorry to see this happen. It is a sad day for the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed Roll Call vote numbers 237, 238 and 239. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on votes 237, 238 and 239.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall vote Nos. 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, and 245. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on votes 242 and 243. I would have voted ``nay'' on votes 240, 241, 244 and 245.