Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding me the time, and if I could just take a minute to wish everybody a great new session. It is good to be back. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we rise today to set a new course for this Congress, though, with the record of the past Congresses, we know we have a lot of work to do.

During their tenure, the majority has careened from crisis to crisis, sued the President for doing his job, brought the House to new heights of dysfunction and closed debate with the most closed rules in a single Congress in our Nation's history, chased nonexistent scandals in Benghazi and at the IRS, and, since 2011, had this House vote more than 50 times to take health care away from their own constituents.

This legacy of dysfunction, of partisanship and prioritizing political games over the public policy has dealt the American people a bad hand. By governing this House in such a haphazard way, the majority has closed down the process and shut out the American people.

Sadly, the majority is poised to double down on their partisanship and even reinvent the mathematics of public policy. By using what is called ``dynamic scoring'' to pretend that tax cuts pay for themselves, Republicans will require the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Taxation Committee to use math that Bruce Bartlett, an economic adviser for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, called ``smoke and mirrors.'' This new math cooks the books in favor of the majority to pretend that the tax cut bills are revenue neutral.

Time and time again, the falsehoods of dynamic scoring have come to light. The first President Bush even called this tactic ``voodoo economics.'' But even so, the House Republicans want to change the rules and inject their partisan ideology into even the mathematics which underlies our Nation's public policy.

Rising above partisanship, the House Democrats will propose today two measures that would do immeasurable good for the American people.

First, giving average Americans the paychecks that they deserve, our commonsense legislation would deny CEOs the ability to claim tax deductions on incomes over $1 million unless their own employees get a well-deserved raise first. This would ensure that average workers share in the fruit of the Nation's productivity, not just the millionaires and the billionaires. Today, as our Tax Code stands, CEOs get a break and their workers are left out. The CEOs get the money, the deduction on taxes, and we get the bill to pay for that deduction. It is destroying the middle class.

Second, Democrats will bring forward the Stop Corporate Expatriation and Invest in America's Infrastructure Act, which prevents U.S. corporations from renouncing their citizenship to dodge paying their fair share of taxes. It is time to stop rewarding companies that move overseas and, instead, use those dollars to create good-paying jobs here at home and rebuild our Nation's crumbling infrastructure.

By closing this loophole and ending the so-called tax inversions, we would raise an estimated $33.6 billion to invest in our roads, railways, and bridges which are falling apart all over the country.

Last fall, I stood by a 100-year-old bridge in Bushnell's Basin that fell into such disrepair that firefighters stopped using it for fear the bridge could not bear the weight of the engines. It endangered the safety of the people they were expected to serve.

In my home State of New York, 40 percent of the bridges have been rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, which is even worse. I wonder what the number is for the United States.

This is an unconscionable state of affairs. Repairing the Nation's highways and bridges is now, literally, life or death. We can do it with the Democrat proposals. We can, and we must.

These are the types of bills that we hope to be bringing to the floor in this session of Congress. We will debate them and ultimately pass them. That is what Congress is about, not a legislative branch that silences half of this Nation by bypassing the committee process and bringing to Rules emergency bills that silence the Representatives of half of the people in the United States.

It is my fervent hope that the new Congress will bring about an era of

willingness to tackle the big problems facing our Nation, a renewed call for true bipartisanship, and a culture of enlivened debate, and I promise that our side will be a willing partner.

In describing how the Bill of Rights came to be, former Supreme Court Justice, the late Harry Blackmun, said that the Founding Fathers survived a ``crucible of disagreement'' to give us a more perfect Union. Forging through that crucible is not only good for the legislative branch, but good for the Nation.

Truly, it is the debate that makes us stronger, and time and time again, debate in the House has been stalled, strangling policies and solutions that could have benefited the Nation. Sadly, this is the legacy of the last Congress.

I would like to insert the text of Justice Blackmun's speech into the Record.

Mr. Speaker, the past does not dictate the future. We can right our path forward. We may be able to prioritize that the American people will win over politics; and, today, we have the opportunity to do that with the beginning of this, the 114th Congress.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), the distinguished returning ranking member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) to respond to that.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), who has been successful already about inversions.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), the assistant Democratic leader.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a valued member of the Committee on Rules.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra), the chairman of the Democratic Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), the distinguished returning ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire from my colleague if he has any remaining speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

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

The legacy of the 113th Congress shows us a broken institution: broken by partisanship and recalcitrance.

I urge my colleagues to change course in the 114th Congress, to encourage openness, transparency, and true bipartisanship. If we can achieve this, we will come together.

If we defeat the previous question, I will move to amend the resolution to bring up the Stop Corporate Expatriation and Invest in America's Infrastructure Act of 2015 to stop giving up American citizenship to avoid paying taxes.

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.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this House rules package has a number of other provisions with which we have serious concerns. Most significantly, the rules change relating to Social Security. Late last night, the Republican rules package was revised to include a major new provision that will likely force Social Security benefit cuts. The new rule would prevent the House from considering legislation to prevent a scheduled 20 percent cut to Social Security benefits for 11 million disabled workers and their families (by creating a point of order against legislation that reallocates FICA taxes between the Social Security Trust Funds, which have a current overall balance of $2.8 trillion), unless the legislation also includes Social Security benefit cuts or tax increases. Without any substantive debate and out of public view, the rule would prevent the House from even considering a mechanism endorsed by more than 50 advocacy groups and which Congress has used 11 times in the past to address shortfalls in one of the trust funds.

H. Res. 5 also extends staff deposition authority to four more committees (Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Science, and Ways and Means). We are deeply concerned that these new authorities will be used to launch politically motivated attacks on the Affordable Care Act, Environmental Protection Agency actions, the implementation of Dodd-Frank financial industry reform, and IRS regulations.

Democrats are disappointed that House Republicans have decided to continue their politically-motivated lawsuit against the President over implementation of the Affordable Care Act and their partisan investigations into ``Fast and Furious'' and the attack in Benghazi, Libya. Extensions of those authorities also appear in H. Res. 5.

H. Res. 5's changes to the motion to instruct also concern us deeply. Under current rules, motions to instruct conferees can be offered 25 legislative days and 10 calendar days after conference committees have been appointed. H. Res. 5 lengthens these periods, so that motions to instruct would be privileged 45 calendar days and 25 legislative days after the conference is appointed. This is clearly an attempt to weaken the Minority's ability to participate in the conference committee process in the future.

Changes to the authorizing language of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group have the potential to make it politically easier for the Majority to file additional lawsuits against the President, and this possibility disturbs us given the events surrounding the filing of the ACA-related lawsuit last Congress.

H. Res. 5 contains a number of other provisions, some of which raise concerns and some of which appear to be innocuous. For example, small changes to the jurisdiction of certain committees, an increase in the size of the Intelligence Committee, an allowance for extra subcommittees on the Agriculture, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees, and allowing the Speaker to reconvene the House at a time other than previously appointed after consultation with the Minority Leader, among others.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Gentleman, Mr. Rangel, our dean of the House New York State delegation for yielding me the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and bid farewell to four colleagues who have served this institution, this country, their constituents, and the Great State of New York admirably and well.

From a nurse to a captain in the United States Navy, my four colleagues, Representatives Owens, Maffei, McCarthy, and Bishop, have brought diverse backgrounds to our chamber, enriched us with their insight, and stood by us through our Nation's most pressing debates.

Mr. Speaker, today, the New York delegation is losing four pillars, four leaders, four friends. I have worked late into the night with each one of them on issues vital to the health of our Nation, such as stemming the tide of gun violence, ensuring an affordable college education, updating our Nation's crumbling infrastructure, and providing health care through the Affordable Care Act.

While they will no longer be serving their constituents in this body, I am confident that whichever way their paths lead them, they will continue their legacies of service to their communities any way that they can.

Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in the New York Delegation and the House as a whole in wishing Bill, Dan, Carolyn, and Tim the best of everything in the next chapter of their lives and careers.

Madam Speaker, I want to take just a moment to say I know this will be the last time you will be presiding over the House, and I want to thank you for your friendship over all these years. Working together with you has been a pleasure.

I want to thank my friend from Oklahoma for yielding me the customary time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me say about him, he is someone I admire very greatly. But I don't admire this bill.

I have to rise to debate the rule for the final bill of the 113th Congress, which is the most closed Congress in history. The House majority has, over and over again, stifled debate, limited the ability of Members of this body to participate in the legislative process, and undermined the institution.

We have had 83 closed rules this term, the most in history, and this bill follows suit and has been, again, brought to us under a closed rule, which means that no Member will be able to offer an amendment; and the $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep the Federal Government funded will be rushed through the legislative process because the deadline to keep the government open is 11:59 this evening.

By the same circumstance, I was doing a rule the night of the last time the government shut down, still on the

floor at midnight and made the announcement that the great Government of the United States of America was closed.

We don't, obviously, none of us, want to see that again, but we do see dysfunction mirrored in the Rules Committee, because all of our meetings are now only declared emergency. That means it has not gone to any committee, has no public input, no hearing, no markups, and no time to fully consider the legislation.

The bill has been brought to us under an onerous, blatantly political process, and its contents are troubling as well. It seems to me that with every passing hour, a new alarming provision comes to light. Perhaps if the House majority had spent less time voting to undermine the health care law, taking health care away from people, or investigating a nonexistent scandal in Benghazi, we might have been able to do a budget.

While this may have averted another dangerous government shutdown, what we are doing now, this bill, is another example of the preferred method of governance--manufactured crises. We are pushed and pulled from the brink for their political games, and America suffers.

At 1,603 pages, this spending bill is a behemoth. It was submitted in the dark of night at the last minute in hopes that we wouldn't find out what is in it and serves as further proof that the majority has reneged on their pledge of transparency.

Speaker Boehner, himself, said in December of 2010, as reported by the New York Times:

I do not believe that having 2,000-page bills on the House

floor serves anyone's best interest--not the House, not the

Members, and certainly not the American people.

He was referring, of course, to the fact that we would have 72 hours to examine such legislation.

Madam Speaker, I submit for the Record the New York Times' article from December 17, 2010, entitled: ``Republicans Prepare for Looming Budget Battle''--even then.

[From the New York Times, Dec. 17, 2010]

Republicans Prepare for Looming Budget Battle

(By Carl Hulse)

Washington.--The collapse of a government-wide spending

package in the final days of this Congressional session sets

up a politically charged fiscal showdown early next year,

testing the determination of Republicans about to take over

the House with promises to slash an array of domestic

programs.

As Congress struggled to assemble a stopgap measure to

finance the government at least into the first months of

2011, House and Senate Republicans on Friday hailed their

ability to derail a $1.2 trillion spending measure put

forward by Senate Democrats, and promised to use their new

Congressional muscle to respond to public demands to shrink

government.

``Beginning in January, the House is going to become the

outpost in Washington for the American people and their

desire for a smaller, less costly and more accountable

government,'' said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio,

the incoming House speaker.

``I will tell you,'' he added, ``we are going to cut

spending.''

With the lame-duck session entering its final days, there

was an air of partisan chaos on Capitol Hill as both parties

scored important legislative victories and events changed on

an almost hour-to-hour basis as the end of Democratic control

of the House approached.

Both President Obama and Congressional Republicans claimed

credit for the package of tax cuts and unemployment pay the

president signed into law Friday. Democrats also appeared

poised to repeal the ban on gay and lesbian troops serving

openly in the military, a long-sought goal of the party and

its progressive constituency.

The House advanced a major Pentagon policy measure that had

previously been tied up in the fight over the military's

``don't ask, don't tell'' policy. At the same time, a major

immigration measure championed by Democrats and the White

House seemed headed toward defeat as early as Saturday.

Republicans celebrated their blockade of the spending

package, which Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority

leader, had to abandon after Republicans denied him the

handful of votes from their side of the aisle that he was

counting on to break a filibuster.

Republicans said their determination to kill the omnibus

spending package even when top party lawmakers had inserted

pet spending projects demonstrated that they were heeding the

fervor of voters who were fed up with giant spending measures

slipping through Congress in the final hours.

``The defeat of the omnibus should reassure every American

that their voice is making a difference in Washington,'' said

Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and an outspoken

foe of increased federal spending.

But the collapse of the Senate measure, which like its

House counterpart would have financed government agencies

through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, means

Republicans could begin the new Congress with an immediate

need to resolve the spending stalemate.

With the Senate making slow progress toward a stopgap

measure, the House on Friday approved a plan to keep the

government open through Tuesday and the Senate later followed

suit to prevent a government shutdown after Saturday.

Aides said that behind closed doors, White House officials

and some Democratic lawmakers were still trying to strike a

deal to finance the government through September. But the

officials said it was much more likely that government

financing would be extended only into February or March.

Republicans say that timeline will allow them to quickly

put their stamp on the budget for the current fiscal year,

and Mr. Boehner and his leadership team have vowed to

eliminate about $100 billion in spending out of about $400

billion in domestic programs.

Both sides say reaching that goal will mean very difficult

choices and Democrats, promising to resist Republican

efforts, say Republicans may find it easier to talk about

cutting than actually doing it.

``They have been really good about talking about the need

to cut this and cut that, but they are never specific,'' said

Representative James P. McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

``I think it is going to be tough.''

The 2011 spending fight could be complicated by the need to

raise the federal debt limit to avoid a federal default--a

vote that many new Republican lawmakers have indicated they

would not make.

Republicans say the debt limit vote could also present an

opportunity, allowing them to tie a package of spending

reductions to the debt increase to make it more palatable.

Another complicating factor is that since Democrats retain

control of the Senate, House Republicans must reconcile their

spending proposals with those crafted by the Senate

Appropriations Committee under the leadership of Senator

Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii. Senator Inouye is

unlikely to agree easily to Republican spending cuts,

creating a climate for gridlock as the two parties face off.

On Friday, Mr. Inouye chastised Congress for jettisoning

the spending package crafted by his committee, saying that

simply extending current funding levels left the government

on autopilot and could lead to disruptions. He said it also

left too much discretion for determining spending priorities

to the executive branch.

``And in two months we will find ourselves having to pass

another 2,000-page bill that will cost more than $1 trillion

or once again abdicate our authority to the Obama

administration to determine how our taxpayer funds should be

spent,'' he said.

Mr. Boehner has made changing the culture of the

Appropriations Committee a top interest of the new Republican

majority, pressing new leaders of the panel to turn it into a

center for budget cutting and stocking it with a few anti-

spending advocates.

On Friday, he indicated that he would prefer that

Republicans next year break up the enormous spending package

that died in the Senate and pass a dozen spending bills

individually to allow for better scrutiny--a process that

could consume considerable time and subject the measures to

multiple attacks on the floor.

``I do not believe that having 2,000-page bills on the

House floor serves anyone's best interests, not the House,

not for the members and certainly not for the American

people,'' Mr. Boehner said.

Aides to Mr. Boehner later said the speaker-designate was

referring to his desire to have an orderly appropriations

process later in 2011 and was not referring to the spending

package Republicans would have to quickly assemble in the

opening weeks of the new Congress.

Lawmakers on both sides were running out of energy and

patience as the session dragged on with no certain conclusion

in sight. Even House Democrats who would be turning over

control to Republicans seemed ready to call it quits.

``A lot of us just want to go home,'' said Representative

John B. Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the House

Democratic Caucus.

Madam Speaker, this bill can cause grievous harm to the Department of Homeland Security by funding it until only February of next year, and it really does endanger the Nation's safety and security because they are the people who provide border security and the TSA. I have said this in the past--but it bears repeating--that funding the government in tranches weakens, destabilizes, and undermines our Nation.

The majority's insistence on punishing the President for his executive order on immigration by toying with the funding for the Department of Homeland Security, of all things, is troubling. This maneuver will hinder how we train new officers, how we guard the border, and it will endanger the Nation's airports; but the most

egregious provisions of this bill strike at the very soul of our democracy.

A last-minute, nongermane addition would fundamentally change our Republic. It gives away almost all power of the people to choose their leaders and to participate in their government by cementing the status of power donors. This provision changes campaign finance law to allow megadonors to give 10 times the amount currently allowed to political parties for housekeeping, and those of us in the political field know what it means to have the housekeeping accounts: that means it can go for absolutely anything. This change flies in the face of McCain- Feingold, and it completes the mission of the Supreme Court with their decision on Citizens United.

This tenet has been central to our democracy in that each person has equal power to influence their government by their voice and their vote. Not only has this Congress refused to reenact the Voting Rights Act, but this added provision will hasten the toxic influence of money and will further corrupt and unbalance our democracy.

Furthermore, the underlying bill includes a provision added only 2 days ago that would put our economy in danger and would roll back the gains made since the Great Recession. This most egregious provision would change the Dodd-Frank bill to give undue power back to the banks. The provision puts the taxpayers on the hook for risky behaviors by Wall Street banks, meaning, once again, that taxpayers will have to bail out the banks if they fail. It was a basic tenet of Dodd-Frank's that we would never do that again, and that will now be undone.

It has been only 5 years since the start of the Great Recession, and the economy has made great strides in adding 10.9 million private sector jobs in the last 57 months, but passing this bill would risk erasing those strides by steering us on a dangerous path toward another recession.

The former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, released a statement this week, calling this inserted provision: ``a substantive mistake, a terrible violation of the procedure that should be followed on this complex and important subject, and a frightening precedent that provides a roadmap for further attacks on our protection against financial instability.''

He continues: ``Ironically, it was a similar unrelated rider put without debate into a larger bill that played a major role in allowing irresponsible, unregulated derivative transactions to contribute to the crisis.''

He is referring to the crisis of 2008.

He is warning us. He is imploring us: Don't make the same mistake twice. Our national economy cannot take this risk.

Madam Speaker, I would like to insert this article from The Wall Street Journal from December 10, 2014, entitled: ``Barney Frank Criticizes Planned Rollback of Namesake Financial Law,'' into the Record.

[From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 2014]

Barney Frank Criticizes Planned Roll-Back of Namesake Financial Law

(By Andrew Ackerman)

Washington.--Retired House Democrat Barney Frank urged his

former colleagues to vote against a nearly $1.1 trillion

spending plan, saying it constitutes an attack on a Wall

Street regulatory overhaul he co-authored in response to the

financial crisis.

At issue is a provision included in the plan that would

rollback a controversial part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law

requiring banks to ``push out'' some of their riskiest

derivatives-trading activities into affiliates that aren't

eligible for federal backstop programs. Mr. Frank is one of

two namesakes of the law along with former Sen. Christopher

Dodd (D., Conn.), who is also retired from Congress.

``The provision inserted into the appropriations bill is a

substantive mistake, a terrible violation of the procedure

that should be followed on this complex and important

subject, and a frightening precedent that provides a road map

for further attacks on our protection against financial

instability,'' the Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement

Wednesday.

The comments came hours after House and Senate lawmakers

unveiled the plan, which would keep the federal government

funded through September. The roll-back of the Dodd-Frank

provision was included as part of an agreement to provide

modest funding increases to the two agencies primarily

responsible for implementing and policing Dodd-Frank--the

Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures

Trading Commission.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and other congressional

Democrats also warned against the move, saying it would

``open the door to future bailouts funded by American

taxpayers.''

``This provision, originally written by lobbyists, has no

place in a must-pass spending bill,'' he said in a statement.

Critics of the ``push out'' provision, including Federal

Reserve officials as well as some Democrat and Republican

lawmakers, say it doesn't strengthen the financial system and

only moves potentially destabilizing activities to a

different bank subsidiary. The provision could also increase

costs for bank customers that use the derivatives.

Derivatives, which played a central role in the crisis, are

used by firms to hedge or speculate on everything from moves

in interest rates to the cost of fuel.

Mr. Frank said reasonable people can disagree on how to

regulate derivatives. But he criticized the plan to change

regulations through ``a non-germane amendment inserted with

no hearings, no chance for further modification and no chance

for debate into a mammoth bill in the last days of a lame-

duck Congress.''

``Ironically it was a similar unrelated rider put without

debate into a larger bill that played a major role in

allowing irresponsible, unregulated derivative transactions

to contribute to the crisis,'' Mr. Frank said, referring to

2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that essentially

barred the regulation of derivatives and was signed into law

as part of a larger appropriations bill.

Madam Speaker, for these reasons and several others, Democrats should not support this bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' against the rule.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a valued member of the Committee on Rules.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democrat whip.

Madam Speaker, I yield 20 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Madam Speaker, this bill spends $1.1 trillion to fund the Federal Government. While we may yet avert another government shutdown, a lot of our trust in the legislative process has been destroyed. If a provision to allow the United States to be mined for uranium by a company with ties to Iran can be inserted into and passed with the National Defense Authorization

Act, taking away land sacred to an Indian tribe, what other deplorable and risk-ladened bills are in this House majority bill? Heaven only knows what other egregious actions we will find.

The House majority continues to govern via manufactured crises. Regular appropriations bills have been replaced with temporary stopgap measures. Cliffs and brinks and fits and starts continue. The majority has another opportunity in the new Congress to do the good work of government and to provide stability to the American people with the American people put ahead of banking interests and political party interests--and I pray they do.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule and the bill underlying it.

And to end the 113th Congress, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, as a co-Chair of the House Great Lakes Task Force, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5764, The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Act.

This bipartisan legislation authorizes the popular Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. This program is critical to restoring and protecting the Great Lakes, which hold over 20 percent of the world's surface freshwater and are the source of drinking water, jobs, and recreation for millions of Americans.

I have represented districts that span the southern coast of Lake Ontario all the way to the City of Buffalo on Lake Erie and I know first hand the special bond the people of the Great Lakes basin share with these lakes. These magnificent bodies of water are truly unique and we must do all that we can to protect these national treasures for future generations. I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

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

Today, we have two bills before us: one extending tax relief measures and another for helping our brothers and sisters and family members with disabilities. These bills, considered under two more closed rules, which I feel I must point out, adds to the tally of the most closed Congress in American history.

First, H.R. 5771, the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014. This 1- year extension will cover approximately 60 temporary Tax Code provisions that expired at the end of 2013 or during 2014. Many of the provisions have been previously extended with broad bipartisan support.

This bill is far from perfect, but it provides us a sorely-needed stopgap measure. Our economy has finally emerged from the shadow of the Great Recession, but playing games like this, lurching from one short- term measure to another, will certainly harm that recovery.

This bill will ensure some consistency in the Tax Code that will help the American people avail themselves of the tax credits that they depend on, just in time for the tax filing season.

However, of particular note, left out of this package is the health coverage tax credit, which is made available to workers who have lost their jobs as a result of unfair trade deals and retirees who are at risk of losing their pensions.

In my district, in Rochester, the retirees of Delphi and other local companies depend on the health coverage tax credit to cover their health care bills, and they have been fighting mightily for some relief from the fact that they have lost their pensions and their health care. This is all that they have, the government program.

Denying a critical tax credit to families who have been hit hardest by unfair foreign competition and a tough economy here at home is a mistake, and one I will fight hard to correct.

The second bill we have before us today is H.R. 647, the ABLE Act. This bill will right an injustice that has been impacting millions of Americans with disabilities, their families, and their caregivers.

Under current law, the individuals with disabilities can qualify to receive Social Security Disability Insurance, but there is an asset limit of $2,000, meaning that if you have more cash than that on hand, your SSDI benefits will be reduced.

This disincentivizes work and saving, creates an unnecessary economic uncertainty, and it does nothing to better the circumstances of our Nation's most vulnerable.

The ABLE Act will change that by creating a tax-free savings account, with an annual cap on contributions of $14,000, ensuring that people with disabilities have a better sense of security and ways that friends and family can contribute to their education, transportation, medical expenses, employment support, housing, and more without risking their eligibility for the badly-needed disability insurance.

I am pleased to see this come to the floor with such strong support because my district in Rochester has a vibrant and involved community of people with disabilities.

I commend my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, my friend, the chairman of the Rules Committee, in particular, for the diligent, passionate, and careful work on this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I have some reservations about these bills, the first bill anyway, but stabilizing the Tax Code and ensuring financial independence for our brothers and sisters does provide much-needed support. So I urge my colleagues to do the best they can on the rule and the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have one request for time, and so I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch), within the parameters of the debate time, and provided that no one else shows up who requests time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, the Democrats have reservations on these bills, but extending tax credits to ensure continuity in the Tax Code is very important to us, even though we know that large pieces of America have been left out of this bill.

It causes us great sadness, but nonetheless, we recognize the need to get this done. All of us appreciate the opportunity for the brothers and sisters with disabilities to have the stability that they need, and we are certainly in concert with that.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Thank you so much for putting this together. It is so important. I hope that people listening to us will understand that some of us here have been trying for years to try to save American jobs from bad trade policy.

Every time the Congress debates a trade agreement, they make these grand promises. I remember NAFTA. They said 250,000 brand-new jobs were going to be coming to Rochester, New York. None of it ever happened. We were promised this great, bright future that didn't show up.

Frankly, over my career here, which has been nice and prosperous and creative, I have never yet seen a trade policy that came out of this Congress of the United States that benefited in any way the American manufacturer or the American worker.

I come from a district that was devastated by NAFTA, and I want to tell you a story about Eastman Kodak. Kodak, one of the great commercial institutions and innovators of the 20th century, once had over 60,000 jobs in the Rochester area. Now, there are only a few thousand left, and this is the trend all across the country.

Eastman Kodak is a name that everybody knows, with Kodachrome and everything that they have done for motion pictures. A study was done once that showed that the word ``Kodak,'' stated to people that heard it, that it was solid, it was good and dependable--Eastman Kodak, the backbone, basically, of Rochester, New York.

They were great patrons of the art, education, everything that they did. Actually, George Eastman made sure that every soldier that went away to the first World War got a camera. It was in a day that you had to send the camera back to the factory to be opened and developed. All these soldiers sent them back and forth while they were overseas fighting--or even in the country. They had this Eastman Kodak camera going back and forth every month.

It would take me all night here to talk about how this is the company

that built the Norden bombsight that won the Second World War and engineers that have come from this company, which is now devastated. Now, they have started up some smaller companies, for which we have great hope.

In fact, the laser beam that took down the three Somali pilots that were holding Captain Phillips--if you remember, they shot simultaneously off a major rocking boat, a big one. Captain Phillips and the pirates were in a smaller one.

They shot simultaneously and killed the three pirates with a laser beam from Rochester. The night vision goggles that everybody is so concerned about and the Navy SEALs used to take down Obama bin Laden are component parts from Rochester. We have all that ability there, but we took the jobs right out from under them.

This debate comes down to a thing called Fast Track, which isn't going to mean much to anybody, but in the seventies, we were the largest manufacturers in the world, and we were pretty darn sure we would be forever.

We saw no end to that great prosperity because people were innovators, and we saw the wonderful things we were able to do. Generations of families would work at these major companies in all of our districts, and it was solid as a rock, and you knew it was always going to be there, until it wasn't.

Fast Track came up in the seventies when we were the largest manufacturer, and the idea was that since we were so good and we wanted to help rebuild the economies of other countries and that we would allow the President and whoever negotiated the trade to simply bring the agreement, once they were finished with it, to the Congress of the United States, with no committee action whatever. We are not even told what is in those trade agreements. I personally have tried, on behalf of Hickey Freeman, to find that out about textiles and could not.

The idea was we would simply vote up or down, no amendment, no nothing--just a quick vote and go--taking away the whole reason for our existence here to represent the people who sent us here and to do what we could to keep the United States prosperous and forward looking.

When I was chair of the Rules Committee briefly--because it came under the purview of the Rules Committee--we were able to get rid of it. Unfortunately, the Korea Free Trade Agreement was filed before we were able to get rid of it, so Korea was done under Fast Track, and I appreciate so much what you have shown us with that. It was very troubling to me about Korea.

South Korea, as we pointed out, shows 7,450 cars. There are 26 dealers in South Korea that will sell American cars, but during the same period that we sold 78,000, they sold 561,626 here. We obviously wanted South Korea to prosper. We lost so many lives there. We fought very hard for their freedom.

But we also signed a treaty that if anybody attacks South Korea, the United States is obligated to go and fight. Would you think that maybe with all of that--we rebuilt their economy, we saved their country-- that they might sell American cars?

What we have seen and what we tried to say on this floor, the three of us all talking about it, is you are buying a pig in a poke here. This is not going to work because the simple reason is we never had enforcement on a single one of our trade bills. We simply reduce our tariff. Everything comes flooding in here.

It is not tariffs that keeps our goods from selling in other countries. It is the unseen trade barriers. They don't like the bumper. The steering wheel is wrong. The window doesn't fit. Or they simply let it sit at ports, on docks, rotting and rusting and whatever, but they don't sell, and we have not a single thing to do about it.

I have a bill that I am going to reintroduce in January--I am hoping we can get a lot more attention on it--which is a bipartisan bill with a lot of outside support that simply says that trade agreements being negotiated by the United States of America would also be accompanied by an enforcement part, which would be a person in the Labor Department who would do it, not the people who wrote those bills.

The people who write those bills have such pride of authorship. I don't know of a single time--maybe once or twice with the WTO--where we have tried to do something about unfair labor practices, but we don't really worry about that. We just take it--or our people take it--those who have lost all the jobs.

The bill we have says we can also do what we call ``snap back,'' that Congress can stop that until they do away with the unfair barriers that prevent our goods from being sold in their countries, as the agreement stated they would be.

We are about to do another one, if you can believe it. This one is a humdinger. This one goes over 11 countries. Again, we have no idea what is in it, as I told you. They are trying to get it through Fast Track. We have a good start, I think, on stopping that.

I am trying to get the number here. We have, I think, 30 Republicans that have signed on not to do Fast Track. We have about a total of 150 Members of the House who will not and, certainly, the Senate. We have let the President of the United States as well as the trade negotiator know that Fast Track won't work here.

Food safety is a real crucial issue. One of my colleagues, Rosa DeLauro, said that when you read about delta shrimp, you are probably reading about the Mekong Delta shrimp. The food safety issue is so bad, as we understand it in this trade bill, that if we cause them to lose any money when they bring in bad fish--which, in the first place, frankly, is not tested nearly enough when it comes in--or anything else that causes them to have any economic cost, they can sue us.

Think about this for a minute. They can sue us because we enforced our own clean air standards and our clean water standards and our food safety standards. I will tell you it boggles the mind just simply to think about it.

What we are asking--and we have let the President know and the whole world that we are trying to get to understand--is that this Congress of the United States will not stand by for Fast Track, and to have a bill come up here that will decimate, again, parts of this country in the United States, threaten our food safety laws, and not have the ability to read the thing, have committee action on it, and to amend it, all that would be gone under Fast Track, and we would only be able to vote up or down.

I will tell you we have had such devastating losses from playing the game that way that it would boggle the mind that we would stand by and watch that happen yet again in cases where it would be even worse.

I am so pleased to be here tonight and join with my friends who try to fight the good fight. This is a magnificent country, and all of us certainly have benefitted from it. Just to be able to be a Representative in the Congress of the United States is remarkable, but with that goes a heck of a responsibility.

That responsibility is to leave this place better than we found it. We can't do that with this trade bill, so I urge all my colleagues, everybody listening, to pay attention to what is going on here and help us to get people that represent you to join us in the fight to stop this trade agreement in its tracks.

As everybody else has said--and I think it goes without saying--I have no problems with free trade--well, free trade I have got a lot of troubles with. Let me back that up.

I have no trouble with international trade. It is the wave of the future. We are doing it. Free trade has always meant that people come in here free and eat our lunch. Fair trade is a whole other issue. Let's have a little fair trade for a change. It would do us a world of good.

Thank you very much, Marcy, for letting me be here.

It is a pleasure.

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained and missed rollcall vote No. 520. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 520.

I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), and I really appreciated his statement on this rule today.

Mr. Speaker, once again, you would think that we would almost expect that nothing good would happen here, and I am rising with a very heavy heart today because nothing good is happening in my office as well because, today, we are seeing the last rule worked on by my friend Don Sisson, who has been with us here for over 10 years, works extraordinarily well in the Rules Committee, has provided us with outstanding service, and really has an integral part that he is going to be playing over at the White House. This means a significant loss for us.

He has accepted a new job as the Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs. And while I really want to wish him well, to be perfectly honest with you, it is breaking my heart to see him go.

Don is not only an expert on the rules and a computer genius, and when anything electrical goes awry, Don can fix it in a moment, but Don is a caretaker. He not only takes great care about the rules, his work, and everyone on the committee whom he really loved and enjoyed working with, he takes care of people individually, and he has certainly done that for me.

I had a pretty bad year this past year losing my husband, and Don was always there. If electricity didn't work or something else didn't happen, Don knew who could fix that for me. So as I speak about it, my personal feelings overwhelm the wonderful opportunity for him as a young man to work in the White House of the United States Government with the President.

I would like to go over his credentials here, but I am not going to. I am simply going to tell you that Don is one of the best people that ever worked in the United States House of Representatives and one of the finest persons on the Rules Committee who understands not only rules, but is a friend to every single person who works in this House and beyond. He could always be counted on as a friend, as someone with extraordinarily gifted intelligence, and as being able to work his way through the most dangerous Gordian Knot. Don Sisson is a ``man for all seasons.''

Mr. Speaker, I wish him the very best of everything, but say to you that, without a doubt, the loss for our side, for our office, and for our friends is profound. Nonetheless, he is going to go. I just want the White House to understand what a jewel they are getting.

Thank you very much, Mr. McGovern, for yielding me the time.

Thank you, Don, for your service, and you will always have a place here in this House. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the career of a dedicated public servant, Patrice Walker Powell of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). Over her 23 years of service at the NEA, Ms. Powell has worked to broaden and deepen the NEA's reach with diverse and underserved communities across the nation.

At the outset of Ms. Powell's career at the NEA, she was charged with leading their Education and Access Department at the same time that the institution experienced significant cuts to its operational budget, forcing the agency to run with reduced resources. Ms. Powell successfully engaged the philanthropic community to develop bridge funding and protect multidisciplinary art centers that were cultural anchors in communities across the nation.

Ms. Powell developed the Arts REACH program, designed to work with each state arts agency to hold staff-led public seminars on NEA funding opportunities and work with state partners to determine potential applicants for grants. Over a three-year commitment to this program, Ms. Powell's efforts resulted in an overall 350% increase in NEA- supported projects in states that previously received direct NEA grants.

During her tenure at the NEA, Ms. Powell has been the point person for the agency's response to natural disasters across the country. Appointed to the National Coalition on Disaster Planning and Preparedness, an association of public and private funders and national cultural services organizations, Ms. Powell led agency efforts to work with state, regional, and local arts agencies decimated by natural disasters--most notably Hurricane Katrina. Ms. Powell worked to get necessary funding to areas stricken by disaster, and to ensure that Federal grant funding was properly utilized to preserve cultural treasures.

Ms. Powell's leadership at the NEA demonstrates her commitment to public service and dedication to advancing the arts to people and communities across the country. I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing and thanking Ms. Powell for her service and wishing her a happy, healthy retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay homage to the life and ministry of the Reverend Dr. James Cherry, Sr. Reverend Cherry is the long-serving, revered and accomplished pastor of the highly regarded

Aenon Missionary Baptist Church in Rochester, New York.

Throughout his thirty-four year tenure as pastor of Aenon Missionary Baptist Church, Reverend Cherry has earned the love and respect of Aenon congregants and countless others throughout the United States and abroad. His teaching and preaching have enabled innumerable people to lift themselves from the depths of despair, given them hope for a brighter future and the determination to reach their full potential in life. His outstanding ministry can be credited in great part for the unprecedented growth of the Aenon Missionary Baptist Church.

His compassionate spirit and boundless love for humanity have guided Aenon to reach far beyond its four walls and into the darker places of our society. With his guidance, the church established ministries such as Dorcas's Closet, Monks Bread, and the Urban Farm Stand to address the basic needs of people in the southwest area of Rochester, New York. Through his work with the New York State Empire Baptist Mission of America, Reverend Cherry has ministered to the needs of countless people throughout our nation and in foreign countries.

Often referred to as the ``pastor's pastor'' by his colleagues, Reverend Cherry is notable for sharing wise and profound counsel with other ministers and pastors. Not being one to promote himself or a personal agenda, he has always freely shared his wisdom; thereby aiding younger pastors to excel in ministry and more seasoned pastors to benefit from his wealth of experience and ministerial expertise.

Reverend Cherry faithfully served our nation through his service in the United States Marine Corps (1954-1957). He has faithfully served as an American Baptist pastor for 54 years and as pastor of Aenon Missionary Baptist Church for 34 years. He has received numerous accolades and many awards, including awards from the National Baptist Convention, the Great Lakes Baptist Association, the Empire State Congress of Christian Education, the Urban League, the NAACP, the YMCA and the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

Through his ministry and works, Reverend Cherry has proven himself to be a servant of God and a friend to all of humanity. In tribute to his lifetime of service to the Rochester, New York community and far beyond, I stand to honor him today. As Reverend Cherry enters into retirement at the end of 2014, let the record show that his legacy is one of love, compassion, empathy and great works. Today I am proud to honor the life and legacy of one of the finest residents of New York's 25th Congressional District. Mr. Speaker, the Rochester community, the State of New York and our nation are far better places because Reverend Dr. James Cherry, Sr. has walked among us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, the excellent Representative of Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, when James Madison declared the Congress' ``power over the purse'' in the Federalist Papers as the most ``complete and effectual weapon,'' he warned of ``dishonorable stagnation.'' I fear we have achieved that. Rather than doing the hard work of coming up with long-term fiscal solutions for our Nation, we have resorted, once again, to short-term measures.

In the 4 years since Republicans took control of the House, not a single regular appropriations bill has been signed into law; instead, we have had manufactured crises, brinksmanship, fiscal cliffs, near defaults on the national debt, massive omnibus bills, and government shutdowns.

This continuing resolution may avert a national crisis in the short term by funding the government until December 11 of this year, but it is further demonstration the House majority has failed to do their most basic job.

They have been so obsessed with suing the President, investigating the nonexistent scandal in Benghazi, and holding more than 50 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act that they have not done the routine work of Congress, funding the government. It is clear that under the current House majority our ``power of the purse'' has turned into ``dishonorable stagnation.''

Not only has the House majority found new ways to procrastinate on finding long-term solutions, they insist on passing the most closed rules in a single Congress ever; in fact, just last week, they celebrated the 75th closed rule, which makes this their diamond jubilee. They continue to pass closed rules which stifle debate and impedes the work of this Chamber.

Through this tactic, half of the country's Representatives have been silenced by the House majority. Even though Democrats received over a million more votes than Republicans did in the 2012 election, we are shut out. Our Nation's districts have been so gerrymandered, our representative democracy has been skewed beyond recognition.

I also oppose the inclusion of section 2 in the continuing resolution. That provision, which further excuses the Select Committee on Benghazi from adopting written rules to govern its work, does not belong in a rule for a must-pass funding bill; rather, the Benghazi Select Committee, just like every other committee of the House, should be required to meet, debate, and vote in open session on its basic rules and procedures that will govern its work.

The House majority previously tried to free the Benghazi Select Committee from this responsibility when it passed H. Res. 567 and established the committee last May. Four months later, they have realized on the eve of the select committee's first hearing that H. Res. 567 was not adequate; and so they inserted at the last minute a provision that, rather ironically, now excuses the select committee from the express requirement contained in clause 4 of rule XI for committees to adopt written rules to assure that meetings open to the public may be covered by audiovisual which means ``in conformity with acceptable standards of dignity, propriety, and decorum.''

When H. Res. 567 was brought to the floor for a vote in May, 186 Democrats voted against it. Let me reiterate that what this bill was doing is excusing the Benghazi Select Committee from having written rules like every other committee of the House is required to do. Not a single Republican joined us in voting against what we normally do.

Many of us objected to the creation of the Benghazi Select Committee in the first place as an unnecessary and partisan pursuit. Seven different congressional committees issued nine separate reports that answer the key questions about what went wrong in Benghazi.

Many of us believe that, to the extent any legitimate questions remain, the standing committees of jurisdiction along with Select Committees on Intelligence are fully capable of addressing those and overseeing the implementation of the needed reforms. It is unfortunate that not everyone seems to have the same confidence in the work of their colleagues.

We also objected because H. Res. 567 skews the process by failing to equalize majority and minority representation and resources and by seeking to excuse the select committee from following the basic requirements that apply to other committees of the House.

Basically, that says that we on the minority side have been shut out again. No guarantees and no discussion at all of fairness or openness either in resources, ability to see documents, or to call for witnesses.

I offered an amendment to address many of these concerns, but the effort failed. After much debate about whether even to participate in the select committee's work, Democrat members of the House ultimately agreed to do so in the hope that Republicans would fulfill their promises of a bipartisan, fair, and transparent process.

Just as we were guaranteed an open process at the beginning of the term, we have been had yet once again.

Inserting a last-minute provision in the rule on this must-pass funding bill will allow a select committee to avoid negotiating over or adopting the basic rules and procedures, and it does not honor the promise of openness. It will not win the public's trust. You cannot continually shut out half the Congress.

The Benghazi Select Committee, like every other committee in the House, should be required to meet, debate, and vote in open session on the ground rules that will govern its investigation. What the CR does is fund the government, and the rule for it should not be a means for the House majority to change language governing the highly political Benghazi Select Committee.

Programs and services all over the country cannot continue to run, as we are going to be asking them to do, on a month-to-month basis. They need certainty and reliability, which they clearly aren't getting.

Instead of investing in emerging technologies or medical research, of which we used to be at the forefront, the majority lurches from stopgap to stopgap, and now that strategy has caught up with us. Running the United States Government in 3-month tranches is a true recipe for disaster.

The CR does extend funding for operations of all Federal agencies, programs, and services until December 11

of this year and provides funding at the current annual rate of just over $1 trillion. However, it does include changes to existing law that are needed to prevent catastrophic, irreversible, or detrimental changes to government programs, specifically to address current national or global crises.

Regarding Ukraine, the CR continues the current flexibility with the State Department and USAID to respond to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Congress and the United States must continue to support the Ukrainian people in their fight for a free and democratic country. It is with some delight that we welcome Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to our Chamber later this week.

The CR also increases funding to address the disability claims backlog at the Department of Veterans Affairs as well as to investigate claims about medical care. We all agree that when our troops come home they deserve the best medical care, and this increase in funding will help to ensure that we provide just that.

Finally, regarding our involvement in confronting the rising threat to the Islamic State, or ISIL, while I am disappointed in the process that led to the continuing resolution, I do agree the House must debate at least one portion of the President's plan. We as Representatives need to debate if or how we arm rebel forces in Syria as well as other tactics in the broader effort. However, I have deep concerns about the ever-louder drumbeat toward war.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed the lives of 6,640 of our men and women in uniform and critically wounded 50,450--50,450 come home to an already stressed VA system that cannot adequately care for them. The true cost of a war is not just in dollars, but in lives taken and destroyed, and I urge my colleagues to seriously consider the path before us.

Mr. Speaker, with this continuing resolution, we have an opportunity to avoid a short-term crisis, but if we continue to postpone the fundamental work of Congress, the Nation's economy will be at risk.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I know we have had this debate before and this discussion before, blaming everything on the Senate, but the fact is we have not done our job here in the House.

There were several appropriations bills that had committee approval, but none of us ever had the chance to vote for them. They were never brought to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), a valued member of the Committee on Rules.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds because I can't resist it, although I am so fond of Mr. Cole, but we can't really blame it on the Senate that we have not done our work over here.

The House was able to find the time to vote 55 times to kill the health care bill, which is providing health insurance for 8 million Americans who didn't have it before. For goodness shakes, we could do that once a week, but we couldn't do the appropriations bills.

Now I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

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

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that makes two changes: first, it would strike a special waiver for the Benghazi Select Committee that lets them avoid the transparent and deliberative process of debating and voting on their own written rules for media access, which every other committee has to do; second, we would bring up the bill introduced by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck) to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank for 7 years, bringing certainty and stability to an agency that helps to create jobs in the United States.

I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Heck) to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, the majority's insistence on brinkmanship and short-term solutions threatens the Nation's economy, and regular appropriations bills have been replaced with fiscal cliffs, temporary stopgap measures, massive omnibus bills, and government shutdowns.

It is far past time that this Chamber's majority party does the good work of government and works to provide stability to the American people.

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 urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' to defeat the previous question. Vote ``no'' on the rule.

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, it is my esteemed honor to commemorate the twenty-third anniversary of the independence of Ukraine and recognize the Ukrainian community of Rochester, NY for their valuable contributions to the development of the Rochester region and their unshakable support for a stable, democratic, prosperous and sovereign Ukraine in the face of tremendous adversity.

Since the Ukrainian parliament officially proclaimed Ukraine as an independent state on August 24, 1991, the people of Ukraine have worked tirelessly to establish a stable democracy and a prosperous economy open to western trade and investment. Though there have been many setbacks along the way, the will and determination of the Ukrainian people has never wavered and they have repeatedly shown their unwillingness to accept injustice or autocratic rule, most recently during the EuroMaidan movement.

Since the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, Ukraine has encountered tremendous opposition and aggression from the Russian Federation and President Vladimir Putin. President Putin has used the full resources at his disposal to sow instability and unrest as Ukraine worked to elect a new President and integrate with Europe and the west. These tactics began with the Russian invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and continue to this day, as Russia arms and supports separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine so craven they shot down a commercial airliner carrying civilian passengers and blocked the international community's access to the crash site.

In response to Russia's actions, the United States Congress quickly passed legislation authorizing $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Ukraine government, $60 million in assistance for training and non- lethal equipment and material to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, National Guard, and State Border Guard Service, and over $70 million to help Ukraine hold free and fair presidential elections, root out corruption, enhance their energy security, and stabilize their economy.

I also worked with my colleagues on the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus to introduce legislation to provide Ukraine with more robust military assistance as they battle well-funded separatist rebels supported by Russia in Eastern Ukraine. As the leading world power, the U.S. should give Ukraine the tools and resources it needs to stand up to this threat and maintain its independence, sovereignty, and democracy.

The city of Rochester, NY in my district has been blessed with a vibrant and active Ukrainian population that began settling the region as early as the 1880s. These hardworking and civic-minded citizens have left their mark in business, banking, medicine, public affairs, and other industries vital to the success of our community. They have also been active and

engaged in Ukraine's struggle for political, economic and social stability. They have brought attention to injustice and lobbied public officials to take action. I am incredibly proud of this community and to have been made an honorary Ukrainian by my constituents. I have been pleased to work on their behalf during my years in Congress.

While Ukraine still has many miles left on its journey for peace, prosperity, and democracy, I am encouraged by the progress the Ukrainian people have made and their courage to continue fighting. I'm also reminded of their quest this year as we mark the bicentennial of the birth of the great Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, whose strong advocacy for Ukraine as an independent state left a lasting impression on the people of Ukraine for generations.

As Mr. Shevchenko wrote in the 1858 poem Fate, ``So let's march on, dear fate of mine! My humble, truthful, faithful friend! Keep marching on: there glory lies; March forward--that's my testament.''

I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Ukraine on its 23rd Independence Day, and honoring and thanking the Ukrainian community of Rochester, NY, for their tireless work to promote a stable, democratic, prosperous and sovereign Ukraine at a time of tremendous adversity. I am honored to represent such a passionate and dedicated community.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Horsford and the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) for their kind words that you have already said about my constituent, Specialist Theodore Matthew Glende.

As was said before, he was born in Rochester on January 13 of 1989. His life was taken far too soon at the age of 23, while he served his country and helped to protect the lives of his brothers in arms.

Those who knew him described him as a fun-loving jokester, who above all else was dedicated to service to his country. After graduating from McQuaid Jesuit High School in 2007, he joined the ROTC at Niagara University.

He was so passionate about defending his country that when he learned he would likely be commissioned as a Reserve lieutenant, he instead enlisted in the U.S. Army to pursue his goal of becoming an Active Duty infantryman.

After enlistment, Theodore was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, based out of Vincenza, Italy. He then married his wife, Alexandra, on April 12, 2012, just a few months before leaving on his first tour of duty.

On July 27, Specialist Theodore Matthew Glende and his unit were ambushed. He courageously ushered his wounded comrades to shelter and endangered his own life. His selfless and sacrificial actions saved the lives of five of his fellow soldiers. He gave his young life in service to his country, and because of his bravery, he was posthumously promoted from private first class to specialist.

Today, I rise to honor the memory of Specialist Glende. With this legislation, the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1335 Jefferson Road in Rochester, New York, will be permanently designated the Specialist Theodore Matthew Glende Post Office.

While nothing we can do will ever assuage the grief of Theodore's wife, of his family and friends, this designation is a small token of our gratitude for his valiant service and will help to keep his memory alive for future generations.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to bring up H.R. 15, a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform bill to properly address the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague for yielding, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

You would think after 4 years that the majority would know how to run the House, but this week makes us wonder. All we have accomplished this week is to sue the President and deregulate pesticides into the environment. And in a real embarrassment, canceling a vote because Tea Party Members refused to support a border bill that was tailormade for them. Actually, I understand it was in their interest to pass it yesterday.

Now, my colleague, of whom I am inordinately fond, said that the time to act is now. But the time really to act was yesterday when the Senate was in town, because there is no way now what we are doing today could ever become legislation because the Senate would have to pass something, and then it would go to the President who said already he would veto it. So we stay an extra day here to make a point.

Instead of going home to our constituents, we are under siege in a choke hold by some Members of the House. This much is true: it costs the taxpayers $24 million a week to run the House of Representatives, and I am afraid the American people aren't getting their money's worth.

President Truman, it is worth noting, campaigned for President using a quote ``do-nothing Congress,'' which had passed nearly 1,000 bills. And under Mr. Speaker, this Congress has passed just around 120. Mr. Truman was mad because they had not done a health care bill. Fortunately, we got that done 4 years ago.

But this recalcitrant Congress is why President Obama had to act on his own. Nothing is working here, but he was responsible for keeping the country moving. I think we need to describe for the Record and for the public exactly what has been done today.

This morning, the majority adopted a martial law rule until September 5, which is most unusual. Martial law usually lasts 1, 2, maybe 3 days at the outside. But we have 5 weeks, which means the Speaker can call us back at any time. We would hope that he would not do that without telling us what we are going to do. But today, we do not even know what is in this bill. We don't understand this legislation because the 40 pages of it we have not had time to look at. So here we are. We do think it is pretty toxic.

But not only was the bill drafted by Republicans only, in a basement room, there are absolutely no Democrat fingerprints or ideas or amendments or thoughts or suggestions or hopes or anything else in this bill. There have been no hearings, no markups, no amendments, nothing of which we are entitled to as Members of the House and sent here by 750,000 Americans.

This bill, we know, does give $35 million to reimburse the National Guard for activities related to ``border security and the current influx of illegal immigrants.'' Now it turns out that only Texas has spent any money on that, and one wonders if that piqued Senator Cruz's interest in this bill and what we are doing over here because it looks like that is where the money will be going.

The bill tragically cuts all funding for the DREAM Act, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. We were told there were something like 700,000 children who were involved in that, who came forward on a promise by this government that they would have an opportunity to go to school and they would not be deported. Now the country has their names, their addresses, and they would be easy to deport because this bill puts an end to the DREAM Act.

I related today in the Rules Committee a story about four undocumented young men in high school in the United States that decided to enter into a contest to build an underwater robot, the trouble that they had simply getting the equipment to do it and the teachers who helped them do it. And they really felt that they had been outmatched and outgunned when they were going to compete as high school students against engineering students at MIT, a premier engineering school in the United States. What happened, those four young men won. They beat MIT. Now, they were part of the DREAM Act. We hope they will not be deported because, more than anything I can think of, the United States needs that kind of thinkers and innovators in what they had to do.

So the Cato Institute agrees. They wrote on July 29, 3 days ago, that DACA, the DREAM Act, was not a primary cause of the surge, and I insert this report from CATO, entitled, ``DACA Did Not Cause the Surge in Unaccompanied Children,'' into the Record. I will also submit some statistical findings from Professor Tim Wong, from the University of California, San Diego, into the Record, entitled, ``DACA Did Not Cause the Influx of Unaccompanied Minors'' into the Record.

[From the CATO Institute, July 29, 2014]

DACA Did Not Cause the Surge in Unaccompanied Children

(By Alex Nowrasteh)

In June, 2012 the Obama Administration announced that it

had authored a memo deferring the deportation of unauthorized

immigrant childhood arrivals in the United States, a program

known as deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA). The

memo directed then Secretary of the Department of Homeland

Security to practice prosecutorial discretion toward a small

number of unauthorized immigrants who fulfilled a specific

set of characteristics. In essence, some unauthorized

immigrants who had come to the United States as children were

able to legally stay and work--at least temporarily.

Did DACA Cause the UAC Surge?

Some politicians contend that DACA is primarily responsible

for the surge in unaccompanied child (UAC) migrants across

the border in recent years. A recent House Appropriations

Committee one-pager stated that, ``The dire situation on our

Southern border has been exacerbated by the President's

current immigration policies.'' Proponents of this theory

argue that DACA sent a message to Central Americans that if

they came as children then the U.S. government would legalize

them, thus giving a large incentive for them to come in the

first place. Few facts of the unaccompanied children (UAC)

surge are consistent with the theory that DACA caused the

surge.

First, the surge in UAC began long before the June 15, 2012

announcement of DACA. It is true that DACA had been discussed

in late May 2012 but the surge was underway by that time.

From October 2011 through March 2012, there was a 93 percent

increase in UAC apprehensions over the same period in Fiscal

Year 2011. Texas Governor Rick Perry warned President Obama

about the rapid increase in UAC at the border in early May

2012--more than a full month before DACA was announced. In

early June 2012, Mexico was detaining twice as many Central

American children as in 2011. The surge in unaccompanied

children (UAC) began before DACA was announced.

Second, the children coming now are not legally able to

apply for DACA. A recipient of DACA has to have resided in

the United States continuously from June 15, 2007 to June 15,

2012, a requirement that excludes the unaccompanied children

coming now.

Third, if DACA was such an incentive for UAC to come from

Central America, why are so few Nicaraguan children coming?

They would benefit in the same way as unaccompanied children

from El Salvdaor, Honduras, and Guatemala. The lack of

Nicaraguans points to other causes of the surge.

The timing, legal exclusion of the UAC from DACA, and lack

of Nicaraguans indicate that DACA was not a primary cause of

the surge. Of the 404 UAC interviewed by the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees since 2011, only 9 mentioned

that U.S. laws influenced their decision to come to the

United States. Other American laws could have influenced the

unaccompanied children to come but DACA is not the main

culprit.

Details on DACA

The DACA beneficiaries, at the time of the memo, would have

to fulfill all of these requirements to have their

deportations deferred: under the age of 31; arrived to the

United States before reaching their 16th birthday; entered

the United States without inspection or overstayed a visa

prior to June 15, 2012; continuously resided in the United

States from June 15, 2007 to the time of the memo; physically

present in the United States on June 15, 2012, as well as at

the time of requesting deferred action from United States

Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); been in school

at the time of application, or have already graduated or

obtained a certificate of completion from high school, or

have obtained a general education development (GED)

certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the

U.S. Coast Guard or the U.S. Armed Forces; not been convicted

of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other

misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national

security or public safety.

Beneficiaries of DACA were also allowed to apply for

employment authorization according to the Code of Federal

Regulations. There is a debate amongst legal scholars over

whether the administration's grant of deferred action was

legal. Those who argue that DACA was illegal contend that the

President overstepped his constitutional authority to defer

the deportation of some unauthorized immigrants. Those who

argue that DACA was legal point to the general power of the

Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to defer

enforcement action. They argue that the Supreme Court has

ruled that decisions to initiate or terminate enforcement

proceedings fall within the authority of the Executive--an

enforcement power used since the early 1970s. Here is more of

their argument. This disagreement has not been settled.

By the end of September, 2013, 580,000 requests for DACA

were accepted by the U.S. government and 514,800, or 89

percent, were approved. Seventy-six percent of the requests

came from Mexicans. Twenty-nine percent of the requests were

filed from California, 16 percent from Texas, and 6 percent

from Illinois.

Read the Full Article: DACA Did Not Cause the Surge in

Unaccompanied Children

What is really happening here is the most extreme, anti-immigrant voices in the Republican Party using the crisis as a political cover to repeal a commonsense policy like the DREAM Act, and the Speaker has caved once again to those voices. Representative Steve King described the underlying legislation as something that he could have ordered off the menu.

Furthermore, the rules are of course closed, setting the record anew for the most closed rules in any Congress. This bill does stop short of catapulting those children into Mexico and then leaving them to walk to their home countries, but it certainly doesn't do very much since the discussion in the House of Representatives for several years now has been what to do about immigration. It really is a sorry path that we have reached the condition we are in right now, a one-House bill, a Senate that is gone, and a President who won't sign it.

If we learned anything this week, we learned from Speaker Boehner's comments on his blog that the President should do more, not less, contrary to the reason why they sued him, and we do hope that the President will do that and bring a more humane solution to this, as almost all religions in the United States have asked us to do.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), the ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security and an expert on immigration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), my friend, and a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene), a member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

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

Mr. Speaker, that is true. We have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, in the more than a year since the Senate passed bipartisan immigration reform, the House leadership has refused to allow a vote on this essential legislation, even though we know it has the votes to pass.

Indeed, over the last 13 months, the majority has not taken one step--not one--to fix our broken immigration system. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 15, our immigration reform bill, already passed by the Senate.

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 urge my colleagues to vote ``no,'' defeat the previous question, and vote ``no'' on the underlying bills.

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.