Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, every day more than 116 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During my first tenure in Congress, I worked very closely with Dr. Sydney Elias Salmon, founding director of the Arizona Cancer Center. Together, we were able to

ensure American cancer patients received greater access to lifesaving clinical trials. Shortly thereafter, pancreatic cancer claimed his life.

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth deadliest cancer in the U.S. and the only one of the four that does not have a known cure. In fact, in the last 5 years, 92 percent of those that have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer died during the first year of their diagnosis.

Sadly, pancreatic cancer is one of the few cancers for which the survival rate has not substantially improved over the last 25 years. It is time that we eradicate the scourge of cancer once and for all. We must again focus American ingenuity, dedication, and resources in the fight against cancer, particularly pancreatic and lung cancers that have lagged behind in diagnosis and survivability. It is vital that Congress champion early detection and research during the 114th Congress.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the coauthor of this amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), chairman of the full Committee on the Judiciary.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, they say sunlight is the best disinfectant. We are trying to shed a little sunlight on some of the problems with the President's unconstitutional and illegal executive order of last year.

I am incredulous that the leader of the opposition has now encouraged the Members of the opposition to vote, en bloc, against all these commonsense amendments defending the American worker, protecting the American worker, cracking down on the molesters and sex offenders, and making sure that they don't have a haven here in America, and making sure that those who want legal immigration are the first and foremost that we consider in this process, and that those who cheated the system have to get behind those folks that are doing it legally before their paperwork can be processed.

It is incredulous that the other side would oppose such commonsense measures that I believe most of America is crying for. People are hurting out there. Maybe they haven't gotten the memo, but I think most of us have.

The other thing that is incredulous is that when you hear a lot of squealing, you know when you have hit a raw nerve; you know there is some truth to what is being spoken.

This amendment is simply a sense of Congress that we don't give a $3,000 benefit to those who have cheated the system, that we don't give a $3,000 advantage to them over hardworking, tax-paying American citizens who have been out of work for quite some time.

As we know, President Obama recently issued a series of memos that would essentially grant legal status to millions of people residing illegally within the borders of the United States. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that such action has been taken by this administration, and history has a habit of repeating itself.

Under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, up to 1.7 million individuals were granted legal status and were allowed to cut in line, being given preferential treatment over those who respected our laws and waited patiently for their immigration cases to be processed.

Furthermore, while these individuals who were given legal status under DACA were initially required to purchase health insurance under ObamaCare, they were later exempted from that requirement. With this exemption, those given legal status under DACA are not required to purchase insurance.

We just don't want that to happen again, and I would urge the other side to stand up for the American worker. That is why we are here.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to my colleagues' attention an incident that occurred on November 16, 2014 in which two American rabbis and three Israeli citizens were brutally murdered in a West Jerusalem synagogue by two cousins associated with the Har Nof terrorist group.

While I appreciate the role Jordan, her government, and her people play in fighting terrorism and promoting regional stability, I am deeply disappointed at the Jordanian government's response to this sickening, ruthless act of terrorism and murder.

While the Prime Minister's office officially condemned the action and its extremist ideology, these admonishments are rendered moot when they are followed by a letter of condolence from Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to the terrorists' family. Additionally, the Jordanian parliament not only condoned but celebrated the murders by holding

a minute of silence on the parliament floor to memorialize the perpetrators. Such mixed signals from the Jordanian government are unconscionable and counterproductive to ongoing efforts toward regional stabilization and peace.

Praising those who commit acts of terrorism promotes the culture of political violence that continually shocks the neighborhoods of East and West Jerusalem, further derailing an already strained reconciliation process at each turn. Such official endorsements send the wrong message to Jordanian citizens and Muslims worldwide, especially youth who are faced each day with the decision to turn to violence or toward peace.

The U.S. Congress must encourage the Jordanian government to stand in condemnation of such acts of violence.

Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to my colleagues' attention a September 8, 2014 article by David Clark, printed in the Huffington Post UK, entitled, ``The Unacceptable Face of Putinism''. In this troubling article, Mr. Clark comments on Russia's continued efforts to ignore, and in fact undermine, the rule of law. At the heart of this most recent demonstration is Putin crony, Igor Sechin, a former KGB operative-turned-Rosneft CEO, who, reportedly, upon losing an arbitration case at The Hague under the Energy Charter Treaty and being required to pay $50 billion in compensation to the majority shareholder of YUKOS Oil, threatened the plaintiff, Mr. Leonid Nevzlin.

The lawsuit stems from the Kremlin's act of taking over YUKOS Oil and imprisoning the company's top executives. As we watch Russia violate Ukraine's sovereignty through its annexation of Crimea and flout the international community's warnings about their actions in Eastern Ukraine, it is important to note that President Putin's government continues to violate the rule of law and must be held accountable. Russia must be required to live up to their international obligations, which includes compliance with rulings by The Hague as prescribed in the Energy Charter Treaty. The international community must ensure that Russia is held accountable for their actions and meets their responsibilities under the law. I hope my colleagues will take the time to read this article.

[From the Huffington Post, UK, Sept. 8, 2014]

The Unacceptable Face of Putinism

(By David Clark)

There isn't a better weathervane of Kremlin opinion than

Igor Sechin. The 53 year old former KGB operative has been

Vladimir Putin's most loyal and influential lieutenant since

they worked together for the Mayor of St. Petersburg in the

1990s. Officially he has served as Deputy Head of the

Presidential Administration, Deputy Prime Minister and now

Chairman of Rosneft, the state oil company. Unofficially he

has long been leader of the Kremlin's hardline siloviki

faction; the group of senior intelligence and security

officers who provide the muscle that makes Putin's leadership

possible. So when Sechin publicly threatens the life of an

exiled Russian businessman, as he did recently, it's worth

paying attention. Russia's behaviour could be about to take

another turn for the worse.

Sechin's outburst came at the end of a bad period for

Russia. Already facing escalating international sanctions and

a setback to its covert military intervention in Eastern

Ukraine, an international tribunal in The Hague at the end of

July found the Russian government guilty of illegally

expropriating Yukos Oil a decade ago and ordered it to

compensate the company's former majority shareholders to the

tune of $50bn. This was a particularly bitter blow to Sechin

who has been accused of personally orchestrated the

destruction of Yukos and who's company, Rosneft, subsequently

acquired its main production assets. Indeed, Rosneft stands

to lose directly if its assets outside Russia are seized to

facilitate payment of the award. Incensed by the loss of face

and the possible loss of business, Sechin raged about the

unfairness of the ruling before turing his remarks directly

to Leonid Nevzlin, the largest former shareholder. Nevzlin,

he warned, ``should take care of himself.''

It's hard to interpret this as anything other than a direct

physical threat. Given Sechin's status and connections, it

certainly deserves to be treated as more than a throwaway

remark. Putin's Russia has a long history of using targeted

assassination as a tool of policy, both inside Russia and

abroad. Outside Russia the targets have usually been armed

Chechen separatists. Investigating authorities in both Qatar

and Turkey have accused the Russian intelligence agencies of

murdering Chechen exiles on their territory.

Russia is hardly alone in carrying out the targeted

assassination of those it deems to be terrorists. But it is

also now one of the few countries that appears ready to use

the same method against non-violent opponents. Rather than a

shocking exception, the 2006 murder in London of former

Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko may prove

to be an ominous foretaste of what the Kremlin is capable of.

Now the subject of a public inquiry, British officials long

ago concluded that there was Russian state involvement in the

crime.

Yet even in the Litvinenko case the motive was related to

national security, or at least the Kremlin's interpretation

of it. If Leonid Nevzlin has now been added to a hit list it

marks a further escalation of Moscow's willingness to resort

to violence beyond its border. After all, the offence that

seems to have made him a target was to do nothing more than

exercise his legal rights in a court of law.

In the context of the ongoing violence in Eastern Ukraine,

it might be tempting for Western governments to treat

Sechin's indiscretion as a matter of comparatively little

importance. That would be a mistake. If Russia is allowed, in

effect, to announce its willingness to resort to state

terrorism, there is no way of knowing what consequences may

follow. The Kremlin is strongly suspected of involvement in

the dioxin poisoning that almost killed Victor Yushchenko

shortly before he became President of Ukraine in 2004.

Without a clear signal of international condemnation it might

consider doing something similar today to President

Poroshenko or Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. The message therefore

needs to be sent that murder for political ends would put

Russia outside the community of civilised nations.

The first step should be for the European Union to follow

U.S. policy in putting Igor Sechin on the sanctions list of

individuals subject to travel bans and asset freezes. The

U.S. included Sechin on its list because of the immense

influence he has exerted during Russia's lurch towards

authoritarian nationalism. Perversely, the EU chose to

exclude him from its own list for precisely the same reason.

He is considered too important to be signalled out for

punishment because of his involvement in the strategically

vital energy sector where Europe's dependence on Russian

imports has all but paralysed its capacity to act. That will

need to change if the EU wants to challenge the impunity of

the Russian elite.

A second step should be for Western governments to issue a

formal demarche and put Russia's leaders on notice that the

country will be designated a state sponsor of terrorism if

any attempt is made to follow through on the threat against

Nevzlin or anyone else legitimately standing up to the

Kremlin. Difficult as this may be, the lessons of the recent

past have to be learned. Every time the West has shied away

from tough action in the face of Russian lawlessness the

result has been to encourage its leaders to greater and more

dangerous policy excess. It's time to draw a line.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the grand opening of the Bridgestone Americas Biorubber Process Research Center in Mesa, Arizona on September 22, 2014.

I'm honored to represent this facility, which will serve as a research and development center for advancing the use of the desert- based Guayule plant--native to the Southwestern United States--as an alternative natural rubber source for Bridgestone products.

This research will help further the development of a more diverse domestic, sustainable and renewable source for natural rubber that will decrease the reliance on rubber trees.

The Biorubber facility will be supplied with guayule from the nearby Bridgestone Guayule Agro Operations Farm in Eloy, AZ which is expected to submit its first sample for research for evaluation by mid-year 2015.

The Biorubber facility will provide significant economic benefits to my district with 40 high-skilled research and technician jobs, in addition to the almost 500 Bridgestone employees already in the state.

The opening of this facility further underscores Bridgestone's ongoing commitment to technological and environmental innovation, and adds to its reputation as a leader in corporate environmental sustainability.

Again, I would like to congratulate Bridgestone Americas on the grand opening of its new Biorubber Process Research Center.

I am proud that Bridgestone is an integral part of our community, and I'm pleased to commemorate this significant development in Arizona's 5th District.

Mr. Speaker, as everyone in this Chamber knows, Russia has been conducting itself in a manner that is irresponsible and demands accountability. Over the past several months we have witnessed President Vladimir Putin's ruthless actions in Crimea and now Eastern Ukraine that has prompted a series of economic sanctions that are being escalated as he continues to display a doctrine of muscular nationalism amid the growing concerns in Europe and the U. S.

This past week, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague announced a historic ruling that the Russian Federation had violated the Energy Charter Treaty when it expropriated the assets of the Yukos Oil Company after fabricating tax charges and put its founder and chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in prison. Mr. Khodorkovsky's former holding

company, GML, rightly brought the case to the Hague and received a ruling in their favor that exceeded $50 billion.

I have been following this case for the past ten years because I am personally acquainted with Mr. Khodorkovsky and was greatly concerned when the Russian government confiscated his company and then had him arrested. At the time, a top aide to President Putin, Igor Sechin, maneuvered the government takeover of Yukos and eventually created Rosneft, a company he now heads, without any compensation to the Yukos Oil Company investors and shareholders.

I am pleased that Mr. Khodorkovsky was eventually released from prison and that the Hague's Arbitration Court, after seven years of litigation, has finally brought justice to a case where one of the world's largest countries seized the assets of its largest company, thus violating all the principles associated with the rule of law.

But as the extensive news accounts reveal, it is unlikely that the Russian Federation under the guidance of Mr. Putin will honor the court's decision that awarded the GML shareholders about half of the original $114 billion claim. Undoubtedly, Russia will exhaust all means to contest the ruling and avoid payment, but ultimately justice will prevail even if it results in the seizure of assets outside Russia.

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that President Vladimir Putin's authoritarianism and nationalistic policies are moving our bilateral relationship back to the Cold War days. The Russian leader has to recognize that in today's world he has to be held accountable for actions that are reprehensible, whether they are geopolitical in attempting to impose his will on other countries or internal when it involves the core tenets of democracy: rule of law, a free press and a viable opposition. Indeed he is taking Russia in the wrong direction.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Secure the Southwest Border Act of 2014.

This kind of came to light a few months ago when The Arizona Republic published a story that these families were being dropped at bus stations in Tucson and Phoenix. Then it highlighted the current administration's catch-and-release policies that are encouraging literally swarms of people to come across the 1,500-mile desert of Mexico into the United States, risking life, risking their happiness.

And the fact is, we can't keep doing nothing. This bill will stop these waves and waves of people from coming across our border.

As we went over to Guatemala and we went to Honduras and we talked with our State Department folks, that is exactly what they said: You have got to make it clear that we move from a catch-and-release policy to a detain-and-deport policy. And that is what this bill does. If we want to send a strong message to people that that $5,000 to $8,000 that they are paying to these thugs that are transporting across the border and hurting these young boys and girls along the way and then holding them for extra money, extorting their parents, that if we want to stop this from happening and stop the pain that is going on with these children, then the best thing that we can do is to send a clear message that in America, there are no permisos--permits, permissions; if you make that journey, you are going to be sent back to your country. That is the only thing that is going to make it happen.

Now, our liberal friends, they want to just throw more money at the problem and perpetuate the problem. They want it to keep happening. I say that is not compassionate. I say continuing that pain and that harm to these children is not a good thing to do, and the way to stop it is to send a clear message.

We have got folks on my side of the aisle that have problems with the bill. What do they have a problem with? Nothing inside the bill. Not putting the National Guard on the border, not stopping the catch-and- release programs, and not giving unfettered access to our Border Patrol. They can't come up with a good reason to vote against it. They are playing right into Harry Reid's hands.

I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

That is what I understand.

I also understand that conservative estimates indicate it is going to cost $2.6 billion a year to care for just half of the nearly 60,000 that are already here. We are talking about billions and billions of dollars, not to mention the fact that these children are being sexually molested along the way, that they are being killed along the way, that they are being sold into slavery, and we can stop it.

Just to care for those kids.

Right.

And, Mr. Chairman, I can't understand how any conservative in good conscience would not want to stop that hemorrhage and make sure that we are not spending those billions of dollars that should be going to pay down our Federal debt.

I think so too.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and the underlying bill, H.R. 3136, the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014.

I would like to thank Chairman Kline and the subcommittee Chairwoman Foxx for their support and work on this legislation. I am really appreciative of Representative Polis and all of his fine work. This truly is a bipartisan bill.

I would also like to state how proud I am to be part of a body that has actually taken its job very, very seriously for the hard times that most Americans have fallen upon, and I am proud that over the course of the last year and a half since I rejoined the Congress, that we passed over 320 bills--40 of them that would create jobs in this economy immediately--that are languishing in the Majority Leader of the Senate's drawer and have no action taken.

A lot of the American public are frustrated, and they have gone to calling this the do-nothing Congress. Well, let me tell you, half the Congress--the House--is actually doing its work.

When it comes to the appropriation bills, which we are required by our rules and our laws to do every year, the House will have done its duty by the end of this year in passing all the appropriation bills. I think we have done 10 of them so far. I believe the Senate hasn't done any.

So I think that when it comes to dealing with the cost of higher education, this is a big step in the right direction. We are aware of the cost of higher education. It has grown by more than 500 percent since 1985 compared to an overall inflation rate of 121 percent.

Federal regulations greatly impede the efforts to reduce the cost of a college degree. As a result, we have got to implement policies to allow institutions to be innovative in developing new models of education, instead of continuing with the status quo because the status quo is not working.

That is why I introduced the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014 with my colleagues Representative Polis and Representative Brooks.

This important bipartisan legislation will set up a pilot project to allow institutions to more easily develop innovative ways to deliver education to their students. H.R. 3136 is the first step in allowing students to earn a degree and enter the job market sooner based on their knowledge and their skill set, rather than seat time in the classroom.

My bill will direct the Secretary of Education to implement a demonstration project and to waive regulatory requirements that impede innovations that might decrease costs to students.

The program would allow colleges to provide college credit to students who can prove competencies through prior work and life experience, rather than a specified amount of time in the classroom.

In our field hearing that we held in Arizona, two of our college presidents from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona said that this will immensely help them to be able to get students through their degree programs quicker, based on their competency.

They all agreed that the group of people that it will probably help more than anybody else in America are our returning veterans because they come with certain skill sets that they don't get credit for.

I would like to just talk 1 minute about how that process works because I had it work in my life. I served a mission for my church to Taiwan when I was a young man, and I came back fluent in Mandarin and Chinese.

It didn't make a lot of sense for me to go through Chinese 101 and learn how to say ``where is the bathroom'' with the other kids when I could already speak fluent Mandarin and Chinese.

I was able to test out of that by demonstrating my competency of already being fluent in the language, and I got just about an entire semester's worth of credit.

That is what we are talking about here. People who have been in the military, people who have been in other jobs that they have had, where they have been able to learn skills that don't necessarily translate into book work, but they are a lot more proficient at those skills than a lot of kids entering the classroom. This is going to cut through a lot of the garbage and allow people to be able to get those degrees earlier and, thereby, reducing their costs.

This legislation passed out of the Education and the Workforce Committee by a voice vote, and it allows higher education institutions to explore more innovative ways to deliver education, measure quality, and disperse financial aid based on actual learning, again, rather than seat time.

It provides flexibility to the schools looking to provide students a more personalized, cost-effective education, and I think that is what we are all here for.

I thank the Speaker for entertaining my ideas, and I thank the gentlewoman for giving me the time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 3136, the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014.

I want to thank Chairman Kline and Chairwoman Foxx for their support and work on this legislation. I also want to thank Congressman Polis and Congresswoman Brooks for working with me on this legislation.

College costs have risen dramatically over the last several years. To be exact, they have risen 500 percent since 1985. The average national tuition for this past school year was just over $30,000, which represents 62 percent of the median annual income for my home State of Arizona. Even so, a college degree is still viewed as essential for success to many students and employers.

Throwing taxpayer dollars at the problem in the form of expanding loan forgiveness does not get at the heart of the problem or the solution of making college more affordable and is not a viable, long- term solution. Federal regulations continue to greatly impede efforts to reduce the cost of a degree. We need to implement policies that allow institutions to be innovative and try developing new models of education instead of continuing with the status quo.

H.R. 3136 will set up a pilot project to allow institutions to more easily develop innovative models of delivering education to students. I have been told before that all teachers don't teach the same and all students don't learn the same. We need to recognize this. This legislation is a step in allowing students to earn a college degree and enter the job market sooner--far sooner, in many cases--based on their knowledge and skill set rather than the amount of time that they spend in the classroom.

All students can benefit from such a program. However, this may be particularly beneficial to our Nation's veterans and nontraditional students. Our veterans return from duty with particular skills, and we should reward them for that by allowing them the ability to earn credits based on those skills and the learning that they have already received.

Similarly, nontraditional students often go back to school to finish their degree to get a better job, and they should be allowed to use the knowledge that they gain from their job to be able to advance their education and their degree.

Additionally, my legislation will incentivize students to work hard to accelerate their degree attainment, potentially cutting their overall education costs and allowing them to begin their careers sooner.

This bipartisan legislation, which passed out of committee by voice vote, allows schools to explore more innovative ways to deliver education, measure quality, and disburse financial aid

based on actual learning rather than seat time.

My bill will direct the Secretary of Education to implement a demonstration project and to waive certain regulatory requirements that impede such innovations that would decrease costs. The program would allow colleges to provide academic credit to students who can prove competencies through their prior work and life experiences and hard work, rather than a specified amount of time in the classroom.

This is a good first step to try to find ways to make a college education more affordable and more attainable for our Nation's students. I strongly encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project of 2014.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to cut all funding for the National Science Foundation's program to study the climate effects on tea quality and socioeconomic responses in China and other locations. In fact, I find it deeply troubling that while our country is facing fiscal challenges of gigantic proportions, staring down over $17.5 trillion in debt, that I can quickly find programs such as this that are being funded on the back of the American taxpayer.

To date, this program has already received about $1 million in funding. Regardless of whether or not you believe that we must get our national debt under control, I believe we can all agree that these are difficult times for American families. With this in mind, how can we seriously look our constituents in the face and assure them we are looking out for their best interest when we allow their money to be spent like this?

While I certainly understand the value of predicting agricultural trends for tea, I believe that that is a task that ought to be left to the private sector, the ones that benefit from this kind of information.

Now, amendments like this are a high watermark. If we can't make the easy choices to eliminate these kinds of programs, how are we going to do the tough cuts? In a time where things are tough enough for the average American family, we certainly don't need to add another burden such as programs like this. And I might just say, finally, that our history has shown us that government getting involved in tea policy, as Great Britain did, can lead to a very, very slippery slope. I think government needs to stay out of tea policy.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield as much time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

I will just say in summation, I think the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise) said it very well, and that is: How in the world are we going to get to the serious cuts to try to get our budget balanced if we can't even cut a million dollars to give to China to see how China's tea is going to grow with climate change?

This is ridiculous. If we can't do an easy thing like this, I fear for America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the gentlewoman from the Ninth Congressional District of Arizona, which is right adjacent to mine. She is my neighbor, and I am proud to cosponsor this with her to show a strong unity of bipartisanship for our veterans. And if there isn't a better cause here in Washington, D.C., to stand bipartisan with, I don't know what it is.

I want to echo some of the things that Congresswoman Sinema has said. This is unconscionable. And since these allegations have come to light, we have received numerous phone calls in our district from other like- minded people that have said, I had a similar circumstance happen to me.

So when Representative Sinema approached me about cosponsoring this amendment to allocate $1 million from the general fund of the Veterans Administration and appropriate it to the IG so that we can get a thorough investigation, it seems to me that this is the least we can do.

Why is this important? You might remember just a few years ago that a gentleman named--I call him gentleman, I think that is a loose term-- Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, went to prison for cooking the books. Now we have got some serious allegations about those that are entrusted with a sacred trust--our veterans' very livelihood--at stake. And I believe that this group of folks in the Veterans Administration has betrayed that trust. But we have got to get to the bottom of it.

Why is it important? Because it is the integrity of the system. A lot of the folks in my district, the veterans, have said that they don't have the confidence to even be utilizing that system anymore, and so they are right now going out of network. They are paying out of their pocket. I have heard many of them say that, as well.

So we, as a Congress, are required to provide oversight for these kinds of programs and ensure that they are getting the best--not the mediocre, and certainly not the worst, which I believe is happening right now in our own State in Arizona--and we demand justice. We demand some sunshine. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and we demand some sunshine on this process. That is why we want to investigate it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, as we throw all these numbers around, I guess they mean a lot on the floor debate, but to the real people that are suffering, they don't really mean anything.

There is an old adage that says there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. We are throwing numbers around here like they matter, but the fact is there are real people's lives that are being hurt, being destroyed.

In fact, I read an article just a few months ago that the community college where I met my wife is actually notifying 1,300 employees, 700 of them that were adjunct professors, that their hours are going to be reduced, and they are being reduced because of this law. They are being hurt.

I guess we can quote them a statistic to tell them: go on your merry way. I know you can't pay for your mortgage. I know you can't make your car payment. You can't pay for your child's college education, but we got this great statistic that we just got out of Congress that ought to make you feel better about your life.

The fact is we ought to be more concerned about individuals than we are throwing numbers around.

I understand CBO also said that total implementation of ObamaCare would cost $2.1 trillion. The fact is we can use statistics to say just about whatever we want them to say, but real people's lives are being hurt; and we have a responsibility here in this body to do everything that we can to try to raise the lifestyle in this country, not degrade it.

People are losing their jobs. My son lost his insurance because of ObamaCare. He was one of that small percentage--again, a statistic-- that we were quoted, but the fact is he lost his insurance. Now he just told us that he is having his third child. The first two children were delivered by a doctor that they know and trust, but because of ObamaCare, their doctor is not covered under their new policy. To add insult to injury, when he went on the exchange to sign up, after he was told that his policy was no longer covered because of ObamaCare, his premiums went up from $450 a month to $850 a month. That is hardly helping people.

I think that it is safe to note, this law was passed without one Republican, and it is time that we stopped our high horse of statistics and actually care about people.

Mr. Speaker, due to a technical error on rollcall 38, my vote was inaccurately recorded as ``yea.'' I have always been a vocal and firm supporter of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) waivers, which save taxpayer dollars and decrease red tape by allowing federal agencies to approve the use of federal public land for recreational fishing, hunting, and shooting without needless process and paperwork that has no benefit to wildlife or wildlife habitat.

I would like to state that my intended vote was ``nay'' for rollcall 38--On Agreeing to Amendment No. 6 by DeFazio of Oregon.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the great progress being made in the use of clean, reliable solar energy across America and particularly in my home state of Arizona. I urge my colleagues to join me on January 24 for the national Shout Out for Solar Day.

Arizona's solar industry employs almost 10,000 people at more than 250 companies. Not only are we the second-largest solar user in the country, solar in Arizona is growing faster than in every state besides California. There is now enough solar generation in Arizona to power almost 200,000 homes.

2013 was a record-shattering year for solar, in Arizona and across the Nation, and I am proud to lend my voice to supporting the continued success of solar energy. Please join me on January 24 and Shout Out for Solar.

Thank you very much.

First of all, I want to say what an honor it is to be sharing the dais with two such distinguished gentlemen who have given up their careers and sacrificed countless hours with their families to come to this body and not, as has been done before, be willing to ``kick the can down the road''; coming to make real change; coming to try to get our arms around the real problems that are confronting our society and us as a Nation.

I would like to say that it is just a debt crisis, that it is just funding for our government. But I think we all know it is much more than that. It is about the freedoms that we hold. It is about everything that we hold dear--everything that every military person for the last 240 years has fought to defend--and that is the freedoms that our Founding Fathers envisioned when they started this great experiment. We don't want to let that experiment die.

I am so honored to be able to serve with two gentlemen that take this seriously and are willing to do more than be politicians and risk those political careers to actually do what is right. What a novel idea for Washington, D.C.

I would like to talk just a little bit about the genesis of the President's health care law when we talk about the constitutionality. They cooked this thing up at a time when they knew that time was running short. A new Senator had just been elected from Massachusetts, so they had to act very, very quickly, or they wouldn't be able to get by the cloture vote. That is why Nancy Pelosi ended up saying, we have to pass it before we know what is in it and then we can read it afterwards, because virtually none of those Senators actually read it.

That is why I understand Wolf Blitzer just came on today and said: Mr. President, why don't you postpone ObamaCare for a year?

Why? Because we have seen over the last week it is a failure. Its roll-out has been catastrophic. We want to stop the hemorrhage and help the American people.

How did the bill eventually become a law? It happened because they did a ``strike all'' on a bill that was originated in the House. But they did a ``strike all'' with language that had nothing to do with the original language.

Why is that important? Because in the Constitution there is a provision called the origination clause. That stipulates that any revenue bill has to originate in the House of Representatives. It has to. That is a requirement

for the Constitution, but this bill actually started in the Senate-- ObamaCare started in the Senate. So constitutionally from day one it started out on shaky footing. They violated the Constitution right out of the shoot.

Now, let's fast-forward to where we are today. Congressman DeSantis, you have done a marvelous job describing some of the inconsistencies and the breaches of the Constitution that this President has done in actually changing his own law. We say it is his own law--it is Congress' law. It is a law that a President can't enact in and of itself and he can't change in and of himself. We don't have a line-item veto anywhere. The President can only change the law if it goes through Congress first. So like you said, Congressman DeSantis, he arbitrarily changed the date in the law from one year to the next, and you can't do that.

I have heard from the Democratic Party time and time again--the folks on the other side--that they can't support this pathway that we have been going through in the last week of putting bills up on funding various aspects of government, like funding for NIH and kids with cancer or funding our veterans or funding our national parks. They say that that is a process of creating winners and losers, and they can't have any part of that.

Well, what is President Obama doing when he is giving breaks to Big Business and to Congress, but he is not giving them to every other American when it comes to ObamaCare? Isn't that creating winners and losers? I think it is a tad hypocritical of them to even raise that specter.

But I want to talk for a little bit about what has happened in the last week and a half. Because while the President is very willing to exceed his constitutional authority to do certain things, when he does have the constitutional authority to do something, he doesn't do it.

What am I talking about? I am talking about what has happened over the last few days with the bill that we passed last Saturday before the shutdown funding our military, the Pay Our Military Act. It was clear in that bill, that very succinct bill, that they had the power to pay all of our military folks, including all of our civilians, and that they could go ahead and take care of the death benefits for these widows who have lost their loved ones in war. That was very, very clear. They had that ability all along.

So what does the President do? He wants to use this for political leverage and make this as painful as he possibly can. So what do they do? They furlough several hundred thousand civilian workers within the military, just so they could ratchet up the pain and make it a little bit tougher on the Republicans.

Then what happens? About a week later Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of Defense, comes out and says, Oops, my bad. I guess we had the power all along.

Wasn't that what we have been telling them all along? You have the power to go ahead and keep these people at work and not disrupt, but they did that for political gain so that he could make it as painful as possible.

One other example: in my own State, in Arizona, we have one of the greatest national parks, the Grand Canyon. It is not only a wonder for the entire world, but it is also a wonder for our economy. We have folks that are doing river raft trips, folks that do excursions and hikes down through the Grand Canyon; but they run into a closed park.

Well, let me tell you something: I was here during 1995 when we had that last government shutdown. And guess what? We had a Democratic President. His name was Bill Clinton. We had a Republican Governor, just like we do in Arizona right now. His name was Fife Symington. What happened with the government shutdown? President Clinton worked with our Republican Governor, Fife Symington, to allow them to use private and State resources to keep the park open.

So our Governor, Governor Brewer, writes a letter to President Obama thinking that he might be somewhat similar in nature to President Clinton as far as being willing to negotiate. I mean, these are people's lives on the line. What did they get? A big fat zero--no way, you can't open it.

We have seen that time and time again. We have seen it on the National Mall that when certain groups of people want to come and take a look at the monuments or go into the National Mall that, no, the government is shut down, you can't come in, everything is shut.

But yesterday, what happened in the National Mall? Fifteen thousand people came for a protest on immigration reform, and they opened up the National Mall.

It is a disturbing pattern. If you agree with the President and his policies, we are going to do everything within our power to use government to help you get where you need to be. If you disagree with me, we are going to use our government to bludgeon you and use it as a tool to further our political agenda.

That has happened with the IRS when it comes to the nonprofit status of various organizations. It happened with our Capital Mall and our Capital monuments.

All I am saying is that I find it so incredulous that the President is willing to overstep his boundaries and unconstitutionally do things through executive order, and yet when he has the power and we have given him the power he is not willing to do it. I find those inconsistencies extremely disturbing and a little bit Machiavellian.

I would hope that the President would look at what we are trying to do through this process. We have a responsibility to the people that elected us to make the laws as good as we possibly can.

The last proposal that we put on the table was that we would delay the individual mandate so that every American--as you said, Mr. DeSantis--every American could get the same deal that Big Business with their great lobbyists here in Washington, D.C., got and that Members of Congress got. They would get the same consideration.

The other part was that we would make sure that Congress lived under the same laws everybody else has to. A pretty commonsense approach, so much so that multiple Democrats agreed with us and voted with us to pass that and send it to the President. But what did Harry Reid do? He shoved it in his draw at the behest of President Obama.

It is time to stop these reckless games. Mr. President, you have already shown that you are very willing to use your executive powers far beyond your scope of authority given you in the Constitution. Is it unreasonable for us to ask you to use your powers when you are given them to do the right thing?

I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma. Yes, it has been something that we have been dealing with in a very up close and personal way.

As a matter of fact, about a month and a half ago, I had the good fortune to meet with Arizona's adjunct general. He's over the National Guard for Arizona. He was finishing up his term in office, and I said, Sir, what is your biggest concern when it comes to possible terrorist activity here in Arizona? We don't have a lot of the national weather pattern problems like they do in other parts of the country, like hurricanes and tornadoes. We have some dust storms every now and then, and we have had some terrible fires. But I was truly interested, and I wasn't trying to lead him in any direction. But he said, without a doubt, the thing that keeps me up at night, the thing that worries me more than anything is the porousness of our border, and the fact that about 15 percent of the people that we apprehended last year were not from Mexico. Many of those people were from the Middle East. What I worry about is because it is so lax and

so easy to get across our border, that some terrorist is going to be able to get across the border with a suitcase bomb and detonate it and a lot of people will be injured or killed. That was his big concern.

So then I had an opportunity to sit down with some of our ICE people that are stationed in Arizona. They are the ones responsible for interior enforcement. I had a long conversation with them. You know what they told me? They said, You know, we don't need a lot more assets to get the border secured; what we need is for this administration to enforce the law. We need them to let us do our jobs. We are law enforcement people. We see the law very, very clearly. We know what the laws state, but our hands have been tied by this administration. They won't let us do our jobs.

He then proceeded to tell me that we have done these surveys on a regular basis to try to determine where employee morale is at, and they said it's at an all-time low ever since they've been doing these surveys right now within ICE, especially in Arizona because they feel they are not empowered to do their jobs, and they wonder, what am I doing here. Many of them want to be transferred out or just kind of, you know, march in place and do their time and get out as soon as they can, but the morale is terrible. These are honorable, decent people who want to do their jobs.

The other side would have you believe that no, this is just about some honest people who want to come across the border and get jobs in the United States and take care of their families. It's not just about that. As we saw with Brian Terry, with the gun smuggling, Fast and Furious, guns are being smuggled across the border, drugs are being smuggled across the border, and unsavory characters who have bad ideas on what they want in the United States are coming across the border, and one day the piper is going to have to be paid. So the border is far from being secure. We have the ability to do it, but this administration will not let them do their jobs.

I thank the gentleman from Florida. Yes, I was right in the middle of all those debates. As a matter of fact, before I came to Congress, the Arizona Legislature, which I was part of, actually passed a bill called Workfare, which was very similar to what we passed in 1996. It recognizes the idea, I think the truth, and there is an old Chinese proverb: If I catch a fish for you, you'll have food for a day. If I teach you to fish, you'll have food for your life.

That was the model we tried to employ, and that was that people have to work. They have to give something back for the welfare payments that they are given. It was called Workfare, and that is what we decided to do here in the Congress.

And it did one other thing, Congressman, that no government program can or normally does really do, and that is help instill dignity in people. I think one of the things that has really broken our country is that we have become this welfare state, a bunch of dependents across the country. I think that giving somebody the opportunity to be able to give something back actually helps preserve, I think, the human spirit. We all want to feel like we have some worth, that we have some relevance to society. And the old traditional welfare program is almost like we'll pay you to stay out of society. We'll give you just barely enough to subsist, but you stay out of society. And that's the message, subliminally or otherwise, that it gives to those people.

We don't really have much to offer you. You don't offer much value to society, so we will pay you to stay home. We thought of a different idea, I think a vastly more compassionate idea, and that is to have people be able to give something back so they didn't get something for nothing. Also, along the way, they actually got skills and abilities that they didn't otherwise have so that they could learn how to work, they could learn how to hold down a job.

That was one of the key components of the welfare reform that we passed in 1996, that while we send that money out to the States, that there are work requirements. I think that's reasonable. You don't get something for nothing. You have got to get out and help pull the wagon instead of having everybody cart you around. That's reasonable.

What did this President do the moment he got in office? He started through executive orders granting waivers to each of the States, getting rid of those work requirements. Again, that was a law that was passed in 1996, signed by President Clinton, and the President coming after changes the terms of those laws. To me, as far as I am concerned, not only is that lawless, it is foolish, because it is hurting the very people he purports to help. I believe that rather than helping them, it is keeping them down.

I appreciate that.

When we talk about the rule of law, the rule of law means that it applies equally to everyone. Of course, today, we have talked a lot about how within ObamaCare the rule of law does not apply equally to everyone. Some people get waivers. Depending on what kind of company you work for, some companies get waivers. Some unions get waivers. When it comes to individual health care policies, some people get grandfathered and they get to keep their policy, and other people get letters saying their policy is canceled.

We have exchanged, in this country, at this point under ObamaCare, the rule of law for the rule of man, where you have nameless, faceless bureaucrats that don't represent anybody and make decisions that change the law for individuals. That's not what was intended by the Founding Fathers.

As the gentleman from Florida said, when you think about creditor rights and you think about the bailout for Chrysler, you have different classes of creditors. In the case of the Chrysler bailout, you had secured creditors. That means that in the hierarchy structure, they were superior to the shareholders. They were superior because they were lending the money. They weren't the owners of the company. They had rights that were above the shareholders.

In the case of Chrysler, what happened is the President came in, like you said, and they got very involved. In fact, they changed the rule of law for the rule of man, where you had bureaucrats coming in and making a decision that the secured creditors would be wiped out. In fact, they were bullied. I think they received 30 cents on a dollar for investment, if I remember correctly. But the secured creditors would be bullied to give up their investment, and the people who actually came out ahead were the unions, who were not secured creditors. This is a violation of bankruptcy law.

Again, the President's job is to faithfully execute the law, not change the law for political preference and not replace the rule of law with the rule of man, which is what they did in this case. Politically, they made a decision that the secured creditors would be wiped out, the unions would be made whole, and at the end of the day--here is the fallout from that: in the United States of America, all across this country, and in the world, people are making decisions about where they're going to invest money. If you look at the investment opportunities in the United States of America right now, if you're going to invest in Big Business, the whole too-big-to-fail mantra that we have heard over and over again, if you are going to invest in Big Business, you are going to have to take a risk, and that risk has nothing to do with the return on investment or whether or not the company is sound. That risk is now political risk. Because as an investor, politically you could be wiped out, even if you have a secured debt instrument.

When you replace the rule of law with the rule of man, especially as it relates to business, people make decisions to invest elsewhere. And if you look at our country right now and you look at the capital investment in our country, we could be doing much better. Of course, if we had a President that adhered to the law, rather than changing the law based on political preference, we might see more investment in our country. Of course, investment is how businesses grow. It is how they raise money to open up a new plant or open up a new store, and capital investment is how new firms get created and it is how jobs get created and grow. So what we have right now is the replacement of the rule of law for the rule of man, and it is been detrimental for our economy as it relates to the securities industry.